Reports: Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Hardik Pandya demoted in BCCI annual contracts

The veteran duo of Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane have been demoted from an ‘A’ contract to ‘B’ after their poor performances in Tests in the last two years. Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah have retained their A+ annual contract again while the notable demotion from the ‘A’ contract has been Shikhar Dhawan, Ishant Sharma and Hardik Pandya alongside Pujara and Rahane.

Dhawan has moved into the C contract as he plays just the one format of ODIs while Hardik has been regularly missing games due to fitness issues, followed him into the category. Meanwhile, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Wriddhiman Saha, Umesh Yadav, and Mayank Agarwal have been degraded from their B contracts into C as well, having not been up to the mark while Shreyas Iyer, Mohammad Siraj and Axar Patel have earned promotions into the B category.

Kuldeep Yadav who bagged an annual ‘C’ contract last year failed to get any contract this year and his lack of game time might have played a big part in his exclusion. The grade A+ category players are paid INR 7 Crores, while the players of Grade A, B and C are paid, INR 5 Cr, INR 3 Cr, and INR 1 Cr respectively.

Complete list of annual contracts

According to the sources from the Times of India, the annual contracts for the players have been finalised and Suryakumar Yadav has earned his maiden contract with the BCCI.

C contract – Shikhar Dhawan, Umesh Yadav, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Hardik Pandya, Washington Sundar, Deepak Chahar, Shubman Gill, Hanuma Vihari, Yuvendra Chahal, Wriddhiman Saha, Suryakumar Yadav, Mayank Agarwal

B contract – Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Axar Patel, Shardul Thakur, Shreyas Iyer, Mohammad Siraj, Ishant Sharma.

A contract  – R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, KL Rahul, Mohammad Shami and Rishabh Pant.

A+ contract – Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah and Rohit Sharma

Notably, Pujara, Rahane, Ishant and Saha were all axed for the upcoming Tests series against Sri Lanka and were told to play Ranji Trophy instead to regain form. Rahane has scored a century and a half-century in three innings for Mumbai while Pujara has scored a sole half-century in his three innings for Saurashtra. It remains to be seen if they can make it to the Indian squad again which doesn’t look promising at the moment.