Shardul Thakur, Avesh Khan and 2 more players from dropped from central contracts.
BCCI retained Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli in Grade A+ central contracts released on April 21, 2025. Along with them, Ravindra Jadeja and Jasprit Bumrah were also included in the topmost grade of the central contracts.
Rohit, Kohli, and Jadeja retired from T20Is after the T20 World Cup 2024 win and Grade A+ mostly consisted of players who played in all three formats.
In another big news, Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan, who lost their central contracts after they refused to play domestic cricket in 2024, have returned to the BCCI contracts fold.
Rishabh Pant has been promoted from Grade B to Grade A, alongside Mohammed Siraj, KL Rahul, Shubman Gill, Hardik Pandya, and Mohammed Shami.
Iyer, meanwhile, is in Grade B alongside Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, Yashasvi Jaiswal, and India T20I skipper Suryakumar Yadav, while Kishan has been moved to Grade C.
Nitish Kumar Reddy, Dhruv Jurel, Abhishek Sharma, Sarfaraz Khan, Akash Deep, Varun Chakravarthy, and Harshit Rana are the new recruits to the contracts list, all of whom are now in Grade C.
Shardul Thakur, KS Bharat, Avesh Khan, and Jitesh Sharma, who were all on the Grade C list last year (the lowest of the retainers), have been dropped from the central contracts list.
The BCCI did not mention the amounts for the four contract categories, but ESPNcricinfo understands that they are likely to be INR 7 crore (A+), INR 5 crore (A), INR 3 crore (B), and INR 1 crore (C).
List of contracted players for 2024-25:
Category A+ - Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah, Ravindra Jadeja
Category A - Mohammed Siraj, KL Rahul, Shubman Gill, Hardik Pandya, Mohammed Shami, Rishabh Pant
Category B - Suryakumar Yadav, Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shreyas Iyer
Category C - Rinku Singh, Tilak Varma, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Shivam Dube, Ravi Bishnoi, Washington Sundar, Mukesh Kumar, Sanju Samson, Arshdeep Singh, Prasidh Krishna, Rajat Patidar, Dhruv Jurel, Sarfaraz Khan, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Ishan Kishan, Abhishek Sharma, Akash Deep, Varun Chakravarthy, Harshit Rana
(BCCI inputs)