The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced the central contracts for the national men’s team for the next cycle. Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan have returned to the list.
Seven new players have been handed over the BCCI central contracts for the first time. The date for these contracts is from September 1, 2024, to September 30, 2025.
This time, the BCCI has given central contracts to 34 players and retained the previous format with four categories. The four categories are A+, A, B, and C. The A+ category remains the same as they have retained Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Ravindra Jadeja, and Jasprit Bumrah. They didn’t give out the fast bowling contracts that they gave out last year.
Rishabh Pant has seen an upgrade from the B category. He will now feature alongside Mohammad Siraj, KL Rahul, Shubman Gill, Hardik Pandya, and Mohammed Shami. Only R Ashwin is excluded from this category because he retired from international cricket.
BCCI also included Shreyas Iyer in the B category this year. B category also remains the same apart from Pant moving to A. The b category has Suryakumar Yadav, Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, and Yashasvi Jaiswal.
C category is where they made a lot of changes. Shivam Dube, Jitesh Sharma, KS Bharath, and Avesh Khan have been left out of the contracts from the last season list. Nitish Reddy, Abhishek Sharma, and Harshit Rana have been handed a contract.
Have a look at the central men’s contact list for 2024-25.
Grade A+: Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja
Grade A: Rishabh Pant, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj, KL Rahul, Shubman Gill and Hardik Pandya
Grade B: Suryakumar Yadav, Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, Shreyas Iyer and Yashasvi Jaiswal.
Grade C: Rinku Singh, Tilak Verma, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Shivam Dube, Ravi Bishnoi, Washington Sundar, Mukesh Kumar, Sanju Samson, Arshdeep Singh, Prasidh Krishna, Rajat Patidar, Dhruv Jurel, Sarafraz Khan, Nitish Reddy, Ishan Kishan, Abhishek Sharma, Akash Deep, Varun Chakaravarthy and Harshit Rana