MS Dhoni dropped from BCCI’s central contract list; KL Rahul gets promoted to grade A

MS Dhoni has not played any cricket for India since July of 2019.

In a surprise for many, former India captain MS Dhoni, one of the most successful captains in the history of cricket and flag-bearer for Indian cricket, has not been given any central contract by the BCCI for the upcoming season.

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Dhoni was placed in Grade A last season, given that he doesn’t play Test cricket anymore and has not played any cricket since the Indian team’s semi-final loss to New Zealand in World Cup 2019. This will raise further doubts over the future of the former India captain, who has kept everyone waiting for his return to cricket, or whether he will return altogether or not.

Meanwhile, KL Rahul received a promotion to Grade A after his good season last year and this year as well. The A+ Grade remains the same with Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah in the list, which entitles them to a payout of 7 crores.

As many as 27 players have been divided into these four categories, with skipper Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, and Jasprit Bumrah being the three in the A+ category.

BCCI Central Contracts for 2019-20:

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

Grade A (INR 5 cr):
Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, KL Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, Mohd. Shami, Ishant Sharma, Kuldeep Yadav, Rishabh Pant

Grade B (INR 3 cr):
Wriddhiman Saha, Umesh Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Hardik Pandya, Mayank Agarwal

Grade C (INR 1 cr):
Kedar Jadhav, Navdeep Saini, Deepak Chahar, Manish Pandey, Hanuma Vihari, Shardul Thakur, Shreyas Iyer, Washington Sundar