Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan’s omission headlined the BCCI’s central contracts list announced for the 2023-24 season on Wednesday (February 28). Both batters seemed to have paid the price for ignoring the board’s directives to take part in the Ranji Trophy.
Iyer, who was left out of the Test side after the second match against England in Vizag, didn't make himself available to play for Mumbai in the Ranji Trophy for his side's final group stage game and then the quarter-finals as he was allegedly recovering from a back spasm.
On the other hand, Kishan, who returned to competitive cricket in the ongoing DY Patil T20 Cup a couple of days ago, too didn't feature in a single Ranji Trophy match.
The BCCI, in its release, while announcing the list of centrally contracted players for the 2023-24 season confirmed that both Shreyas and Ishan weren't considered for the contract in the current round of recommendations.
The release also added, "The BCCI has recommended that all athletes give precedence to participating in domestic cricket during periods when they are not representing the national team."
Talking about Ishan Kishan, the wicketkeeper-batter had withdrawn from the Test series in South Africa last December, citing personal reasons. Since then, he has not been picked in any of the Indian squads.
Despite repeated reminders from head coach Rahul Dravid and BCCI secretary Jay Shah, the southpaw didn't make himself available for Jharkhand in the ongoing Ranji Trophy.
According to an ESPNCricinfo report, the Indian team management got in touch with him during the England Test series but Kishan said he was not ready yet. In his absence, Dhruv Jurel made his debut and earned the Player-of-the-Match award in the fourth Test at Ranchi.
The report further claimed that the selectors, who recommended the names to the board for the central contracts, were not one bit pleased by Kishan training in Baroda alongside his IPL skipper Hardik Pandya and not playing domestic cricket.
As for Shreyas Iyer, he was declared fit by the BCCI medical team. However, MCA sources in the report said last week that Iyer had back spasms.
While Iyer will take part in Mumbai’s Ranji Trophy semi-final clash against Tamil Nadu this week, his presence at the pre-training camp for the Kolkata Knight Riders wasn’t well received by the selectors.
"The selectors don't doubt their ability," a BCCI official was quoted as saying by ESPNCricinfo. "But if the NCA is saying you are fit and you are not making yourself available for the Test series, how can the BCCI offer you a contract?"
"After the IPL, if they happen to get selected and fulfil the criteria of the number of matches required for a pro-rata contract, they will be awarded a contract."
LIST OF ANNUAL CONTRACTS:
Grade A+ (4 Athletes) Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja.
Grade A (6 Athletes) R Ashwin, Mohammad Shami, Mohammed Siraj, KL Rahul, Shubman Gill and Hardik Pandya.
Grade B (5 Athletes) Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant, Kuldeep Yadav, Akshar Patel and Yashasvi Jaiswal.
Grade C (15 Athletes) Rinku Singh, Tilak Verma, Ruturaj Gaekwad, Shardul Thakur, Shivam Dube, Ravi Bishnoi, Jitesh Sharma, Washington Sundar, Mukesh Kumar, Sanju Samson, Arshdeep Singh, KS Bharat, Prasidh Krishna, Avesh Khan and Rajat Patidar.
(With ESPNCricinfo Inputs)
