Earlier this week, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) released a long list of players who have been awarded the ‘Central Contract' for the season 2022-23.
Star batter Virat Kohli retained his spot in the topmost A+ category of players earning INR 7 crore per year alongside Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah while Ravindra Jadeja is the new entrant in this group.
According to a report published in The Indian Express, the annual salary of the aforementioned names is 12 times more than what Pakistan skipper Babar Azam makes under PCB’s central contract for the 2022-23 season.
Babar has a contract worth 1.25 million PKR (Pakistan Rupee) per month, equivalent to INR 43,50,000 per year, which is almost 12 times less than Kohli, Rohit, Bumrah and Jadeja’s annual income under the new contract.
In fact, the topmost package in PCB contracts is less than half of what the C category BCCI central contracted players like Sanju Samson and Arshdeep Singh make per annum.
Besides Babar, Mohammad Rizwan, Shaheen Afridi, Imam-ul-Haq and Hasan Ali are bracketed under the red and white-ball contracts category of players.
Talking about BCCI’s fresh central contracts, there was a notable demotion as well, with KL Rahul dropping down from A to B.
The likes of Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Ajinkya Rahane, Ishant Sharma, Wriddhiman Saha, Deepak Chahar, and Hanuma Vihari have been left entirely out of contract.
On the other hand, players to get promotions in the central contracts were Suryakumar Yadav and Shubman Gill, who moved to Grade B from Grade C.
BCCI Central Contracts List 2022-23:
Grade A+: Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah, Ravindra Jadeja
Grade A: Hardik Pandya, Ravichandran Ashwin, Mohammad Shami, Rishabh Pant, Akshar Patel
Grade B: Cheteshwar Pujara, KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer, Mohammed Siraj, Suryakumar Yadav, Shubman Gill
Grade C: Umesh Yadav, Shikhar Dhawan, Shardul Thakur, Ishan Kishan, Deepak Hooda, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Sanju Samson, Washington Sundar, Arshdeep Singh, KS Bharat
(The Indian Express Inputs)
