Off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin, player of the series in the home series against the West Indies and New Zealand has been upgraded to Grade ‘A’ in the BCCI central contracts announced on Friday.
Harbhajan relegated
Off-spinner Harbhajan Singh and fast bowler Ishant Sharma have been relegated to Group ‘B’.
Nine players have been awarded the Group ‘A’ Rs. 1 crore contract, eight in the Group ‘B’ Rs. 50 lakh contract and 20 in the Group ‘C’ Rs. 25 lakh contract.
The committee comprising the BCCI President, Secretary and the chairman of the selection committee have upgraded Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane and Umesh Yadav from Group ‘C’ to Group ‘B’ and placed Irfan Pathan in the same group.
The Baroda all-rounder was not given a contract last October.
Left-arm spinner Ravindra Jadeja and seamer Praveen Kumar have been relegated from Group ‘B’ to Group ‘C’.
Sreesanth dropped
Ashoke Dinda, Yusuf Pathan and L. Balaji have been offered the low-end contract and S. Sreesanth and Jaydev Unadkat have been altogether dropped.
Grade ‘A’ (Rs. one crore each): Sachin Tendulkar, M.S. Dhoni, Zaheer Khan, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Suresh Raina, Yuvraj Singh, Virat Kohli and R. Ashwin.
Grade ‘B’ (Rs. 50 lakh each): Harbhajan Singh, Ishant Sharma, Pragyan Ojha, Rohit Sharma, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Irfan Pathan and Umesh Yadav.
Grade ‘C’ (Rs. 25 lakh each): Ravindra Jadeja, Amit Mishra, Vinay Kumar, Munaf Patel, Abhimanyu Mithun, Murali Vijay, Shikhar Dhawan, Wriddhiman Saha, Parthiv Patel, Manoj Tiwary, S. Badrinath, Piyush Chawla, Dinesh Karthik, Rahul Sharma, Varun Aaron, Abhinav Mukund, Ashoke Dinda, Yusuf Pathan, Praveen Kumar and L. Balaji.
