Manish Pandey Dropped As BCCI Announces Annual Central Contracts List For The Indian Cricket Team

The Board of Control for Cricket in India on Thursday announced the Annual Player Contracts for Team India for the year 2020-21. The payment contract is for the senior men’s team for the period from October 2020 to September 2021.

The Indian team returned to cricket with the IPL 2020 last year after playing New Zealand in their own backyard, while the cricket world came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic and India went into a 4-month strict lockdown which confined the cricketers into their home.

Even the IPL 2020 was postponed from March 2020, until BCCI managed to shift the entire tournament to UAE, where it was played in three cities in September-November 2020. Indian team then returned to action as they toured Australia for a full series and came out victorious in the T20I and Test series.

India then hosted England for a full series in what was an amazing battle between two of the world’s best cricket teams. Unfortunately, England couldn’t manage to beat India in either of the series, as India pocketed the Test series 3-1, T20Is series 3-2 and ODI series 2-1.

BCCI Announces Annual Contracts For 2020-21 For India Team Players

The Indian team players are currently involved in the ongoing IPL 2021 edition which started on April 9 and will continue till May 30^th.  BCCI on Thursday announced the annual contract retainers for the senior India men’s team from October 2020 to September 2021.

The payment structure sees 4 pay grades- A+, A, B, and C.  The A+ grade players get INR 7 Cr, Grade A gets INR 5 Cr, Grade B gets INR 3 Cr and Grade C gets INR 1 Cr annually. There were some changes for players who were promoted and demoted in the new annual contracts.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who missed much of the action after getting injured in the IPL 2020, has been included in Grade B, while Kuldeep Yadav has been included in the Grade C list. All-rounder Hardik Pandya, who also returned to cricket in IPL 2020 after spending much of the previous time recuperating from his back surgery, has been promoted to Grade A.

Yuzvendra Chahal was also demoted to Grade C, while Manish Pandey was removed from the contract lists altogether.

Here is the list of players according to the grades:

Grade A+ (7 Crores) : Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah

Grade A (5 Crores) : Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Shikhar Dhawan, KL Rahul, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma, Rishabh Pant, and Hardik Pandya.

Grade B (3 Crores) : Wriddhiman Saha, Umesh Yadav, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Shardul Thakur, Mayank Agarwal

Grade C (1 Crore) : Kuldeep Yadav, Navdeep Saini, Deepak Chahar, Shubman Gill, Hanuma Vihari, Axar Patel, Shreyas Iyer, Washington Sundar, Yuzvendra Chahal and Mohammed Siraj

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