The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Thursday announced the central contracts for the 2019-20 season and in a big move former India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni has been left out from all four categories.
He was in the A category, which fetches a player Rs 5 crore, until last year.
Dropping from the list has raised fresh doubts on the future of Dhoni who has not played for India since the 2019 World Cup semi-final loss to New Zealand.
Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah are in A+ category where they will get a payout of 7 crore.
Besides Dhoni, Dinesh Karthik, Khaleel Ahmed and Ambati Rayudu are the other players who have been dropped from the central contract.
“The BCCI announces the Annual Player Contracts for Team India (Senior Men) for the period from October 2019 to September 2020. Saini, Mayank, Shreyas, Washington and Deepak Chahar get annual player contracts,” BCCI tweeted.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India Central Contracts for 2019-20:
Grade A: Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, KL Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma, Kuldeep Yadav and Rishabh Pant
Grade B: Wriddhiman Saha, Umesh Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Hardik Pandya, Mayank Agarwal
Grade C: Kedar Jadhav, Navdeep Saini, Deepak Chahar, Manish Pandey, Hanuma Vihari, Shardul Thakur, Shreyas Iyer, Washington Sundar.
