MS Dhoni Left Out Of BCCI's Central Contract For 2019-20 Season

In yet another surprising turn of events regarding the future of MS Dhoni in the Indian team, the former India skipper has been left out of the central contracts for 2019-20 season. The contracts, which will run for the period from October 2019 to September 2020, was announced by the BCCI on Thursday. The veteran wicketkeeper-batsman has not played a competitive game since the World Cup in July.

Soon after the World Cup, he took a sabbatical from the game and left for Jammu and Kashmir to serve the Indian army. He was expected to return to action at the start of the home season but the legendary cricketer or perhaps the selectors decided against it. Consequently, MS Dhoni missed the home series against South Africa, Bangladesh and West Indies.

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He was also not named in the squads for the T20I series against Sri Lanka and the ODI series against Australia. The way things have panned out in the last few months, one thing is clear that the selectors are unlikely to recall MS Dhoni until and unless he plays in domestic cricket or IPL again.

Central contracts:

MS Dhoni is the biggest absentee from the central contract’s list. He was in the A category for the last season. Talking about the latest contracts, MS Dhoni, Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah are the only three players in the A+ category.  All the three players were the only three names in the A+ category last year too.

KL Rahul has been promoted from Grade B to Grade A while Wriddhiman Saha has been promoted from Grade C to Grade B. Among new entrants in the list are Navdeep Saini, Shreyas Iyer, Shardul Thakur, Washington Sundar and Deepak Chahar. All the new entrants are in Grade C. Mayank Agarwal, who has cemented his spot in the Test side, has also received the central contract and is in Grade B.

Here is the list of India’s centrally contracted players:

Grade A+:

Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah

Grade A:

Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, KL Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, Mohammed. Shami, Ishant Sharma, Kuldeep Yadav,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