Fans of Indian cricket team are waiting for MS Dhoni’s return from the past 6 months. The wicket-keeper batsman has not appeared in competitive cricket after the 2019 World Cup semi-final against New Zealand. Amid this on Thursday, BCCI comes up with a fresh annual contract list and the name of the former skipper is missing.
BCCI has dropped Dhoni from their latest annual contract list for the period of October 2019 to September 2020. MS Dhoni had bagged Grade A contract under which he got 5 crore salary last year. But this time he has not featured in any grade for the 2019-20 season. This simply means that BCCI/selectors are looking to include Dhoni in the Indian team.
BCCI has separated annual contracts in four grades, which are A+(7 crore), A (5 crore), B (3 crore) and C (1 crore). A total of 27 players are part of these 4 grades. Kohli, Rohit and Bumrah again are in top bracket. Other than Dhoni, Ambati Rayudu, Dinesh Karthik and Khaleel Ahmed are also dropped from the annual contract. This year KL Rahul is promoted from Grade B to Grade A salary contract.
BCCI Central Contract 2020 Full List
Category A+: Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah
Category A: Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, KL Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, Mohammad Shami, Ishant Sharma, Kuldeep Yadav and Rishabh Pant.
Category B: Wriddhiman Saha, Umesh Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Hardik Pandya, Mayank Agarwal.
Category C: Kedar Jadhav, Navdeep Saini, Deepak Chahar, Manish Pandey, Hanuma Vihari, Shardul Thakur, Shreyas Iyer, Washington Sundar.
Meanwhile, Dhoni has been axed from the central contract list but that doesn’t mean he can’t feature in India team. A player can play in India team without BCCI’s salary contract. Dhoni may eye IPL 2020 as an opportunity to get his place back in the Indian team.
