Mahendra Singh Dhoni is most prominent omission from BCCI’s central contracts list for 2019-2020. The contracts for the October-September cycle are awarded by a three-member committee consisting of the BCCI president, secretary and chief selector based on the performance during the last cycle. Skipper Virat Kohli, his white-ball deputy Rohit Sharma and top pacer Jasprit Bumrah were retained in the highest A bracket of seven crore rupees.
Among others, batsman L. Rahul has been promoted from ‘B’ grade to ‘A’ category. Test opener Mayank Agarwal has been included in the Grade ‘B’ category, which also features Hardik Pandya and Yuzvendra Chahal along with two others. Pacer Navdeep Saini and T20 specialist Washington Sundar are new entrants in Grade ‘C’ alongside Shreyas Iyer, Deepak Chahar and Shardul Thakur.
Veteran Cricketer Mithali Raj was demoted to Grade ‘B’ from ‘A’ while Radha Yadav and Taniya Bhatia were elevated to the middle bracket. T20 skipper Harmanpreet Kaur retained her ‘A’ category contract alongside Smriti Mandhana and Poonam Yadav. Players getting a central contract for the first time are 15-year-old opener Shafali Verma and Harleen Deol.