3 Team India players who missed annual contract despite performing well

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has published its annual contract list for the period October 2020 to September 2021.

The payment structure consists of four different categories, namely Grade A+, Grade A, Grade B and Grade C.

ALERT🚨: BCCI announces annual player retainership 2020-21 - #TeamIndia (Senior Men) for the period from October 2020 to September 2021. Payment structure: Grade A+ : INR 7 CrGrade A : INR 5 CrGrade B : INR 3 CrGrade C : INR 1 Crhttps://t.co/WgtmO7pIOv pic.twitter.com/ycnPcXPYJu

— BCCI (@BCCI) April 15, 2021

Here are the Indian players who have been awarded an annual contract till September' 21.

A+ (INR 7 Cr): Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah.

Grade A (INR 5 Cr): Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Shikhar Dhawan, KL Rahul, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma, Rishabh Pant and Hardik Pandya.

Grade B (INR 3 Cr): Wriddhiman Saha, Umesh Yadav, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Shardul Thakur and Mayank Agarwal.

Grade C (INR 1 Cr): Kuldeep Yadav, Navdeep Saini, Deepak Chahar, Shubman Gill, Hanuma Vihari, Axar Patel, Shreyas Iyer, Washington Sundar, Yuzvendra Chahal and Mohammed Siraj.

However, some players who performed well over the past year missed out. On that note, let's take a look at three such players who missed out on an annual contract despite performing well.

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#1 T Natarajan

Australia vs India - T20 Game 1

T Natarajan has been one of the best finds of Indian cricket in the last year.

After Zaheer Khan's retirement, India's never-ending quest for a left-arm fast bowler finally came to an end with the emergence of Natarajan. Several left-arm bowlers like Barinder Sran Singh, Khaleel Ahmed and Jaydev Unadkat were tried in the intervening period, but all of them struggled for consistency.

Meanwhile, after enjoying a splendid IPL 2020 campaign with SRH, Natarajan made his debut for Team India in the third ODI against Australia. Since then, he has bolstered his place in the team with impressive performances. In four T20I matches, T Natarajan has taken seven wickets at an economy rate of 7.62.

Though he is expected to play a vital role in India's T20 World Cup campaign, T Natarajan is a notable absentee in the annual contract list.

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#2 Suryakumar Yadav

Suryakumar Yadav

Suryakumar Yadav has been outstanding with the bat in the past two years. After being snubbed on several occasions, he made his international debut against England in the 2021 T20I series.

In the three T20Is he featured in, the 30-year-old scored 87 runs in two innings at a massive strike rate of 185.41. With Suryakumar Yadav expected to play at no. 4 in the near future, he should have been included in the list.

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#3 Ishan Kishan

Ishan Kishan

Another notable player who missed out on the BCCI's annual contract list is Ishan Kishan. After racking up consistent performances in the domestic circuit, he made his much-awaited debut in the T20I series against England this year.

In his debut innings, he played a blazing knock of 56 runs off just 32 balls at an impressive strike rate of 192.8. He looked confident right from the start of his innings and is deemed as the future of Indian cricket.

With Kishan set to play in India's middle-order along with Suryakumar Yadav in the shortest format of the game, his omission from the contract list is surprising.