There are few players who have not qualified for the central contract this season
The BCCI has announced the central contracts for the 2025-26 season as Shreyas Iyer made an expected return to the list after a successful Champions Trophy 2025 campaign.
Test and ODI captain Rohit Sharma alongside his predecessor Virat Kohli and star pacer Jasprit Bumrah have all retained A-plus category contracts. Kohli and Rohit had announced retirement from T20Is in June last year after winning the 2024 T20 World Cup in the Caribbean. Ravindra Jadeja, who has also announced his retirement from T20Is, is also in the top bracket.
Keeper-batter Rishabh Pant has been promoted to Grade A category and has replaced Ravichandran Ashwin who retired from international cricket earlier this year.
The new inclusions were Sunrisers Hyderabad duo Nitish Kumar Reddy and Abhishek Sharma as well as Delhi pacer Harshit Rana who made his all-format debut recently.
Varun Chakravarthy, who made a successful comeback to the T20I side and made his ODI debut, has also been included in the Grade C category.
Shreyas, who was left out of the list last year, is back in Grade B category. Discarded keeper-batter Ishan Kishan has also been included in Grade C category.
ALSO READ:
Players need to meet the criteria of playing a minimum of 3 Tests or 8 ODIs or 10 T20Is within the specified period to be eligible for the central contracts.
The players in the Grade A+ is INR 7 crore while Grade A players get INR 5 crore. Players placed in Grade B get INR 3 crore per year while Grade C players receive INR 1 crore.
The BCCI Central Contracts are for the time period of October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2025
While there were no changes in the A+ category despite three of the four players retiring from T20Is, the A category had a new entrant with Pant. Meanwhile, Grade B had five players with Shreyas making his comeback on the list.
However, Grade C has seen eight new inclusions in the form of Dhruv Jhurel, Sarfaraz Khan, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Abhishek Sharma, Ishan Kishan, Akash Deep, Varun Chakravarthy and Harshit Rana.
Mumbai and Lucknow Super Giants all-rounder Shardul Thakur, Andhra keeper-batter KS Bharat and Royal Challengers Bengaluru keeper-batter Jitesh Sharma have been dropped from the latest list.
Kishan hasn’t played an international game since November 2023 but has been recommended to the central contracts list. Other exception is Harshit Rana, who has played two Tests, five ODIs and one T20I, but has been included.
For more updates, follow CricXtasy on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Telegram, and YouTube.
