BCCI central contracts for 2011-2012

The list of contracted Indian players for the upcoming season 2011-2012, has been published. There are 37 players compared to 24 players last season. Few stars have been rewarded for their stellar comebacks while few have been demoted or totally removed from the list. The 3 Grades of contracted players are as follows

Grade A: Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, Suresh Raina, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Virat Kohli, Ishant Sharma.

Grade B: Praveen Kumar, R Ashwin, Pragyan Ojha, Rohit Sharma, Ravindra Jadeja.

Grade C: Sreesanth, Amit Mishra, Cheteshwar Pujara, Abhimanyu Mithun, Vinay Kumar , Ajinkya Rahane, Munaf Patel, M Vijay, Abhinav Mukund, Shikhar Dhawan, Wriddhiman Saha, Parthiv Patel, S Badrinath, Manoj Tiwary, Piyush Chawla, Dinesh Karthik, Jaydev Unadkat, Umesh Yadav, Rahul Sharma, Varun Aaron.

The big movers

Among the new entrants to Group A are Yuvraj Singh, Virat Kohli and Ishant Sharma.

Yuvraj was in Grade B, the previous season but, following his Man of the Series performance in the CWC, this move back to the elite was expected. Kohli has been a fast riser in ODI cricket for India and it won’t be long before he is a regular in the Tests as well. Ishant has put behind his injury woes and has done well in the England and West Indies tours.

Rohit Sharma moved up from Grade C to B, so did R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, but Ashish Nehra, who had a Grade B contract, did not make the list of contacted players at all.

Rohit had a good series in the ODIs in West Indies while Ashwin and Jadeja are developing into more than capable spinners for India in the limited versions. With this snub, Nehra’s career has effectively been shut out.

Umesh Yadav, Abhinav Mukund, Rahul Sharma and Varun Aaron received contracts for the first time, as expected Grade C. Umesh and Aaron are being looked at as promising pace prospects while Rahul Sharma will also join this pair for the Tests against the touring West Indies, starting on November 6.

Time to pull up his socks

Murali Vijay has been demoted from B to C. This TN opener has been given quite a few chances in the absence of the injured Sehwag but, his impact moments have been too sporadic. The tour of WI earlier this year, was a big struggle for him. Munaf Patel actually deserves a B contract following his prominent contributions in the CWC triumph earlier this year. But his struggles with injuries have robbed him of a consistent place in the team and hence he finds himself in Group C. Ajinkya Rahane also finds himself in the list following some impressive ODI performances against England.

As expected, the Grade C list has a lot of players who have been on the verge of getting into the Indian team since a long time. This retainer payment might be minor solace for them to keep working hard and just hope for that call, one day.

FYI, The annual retainers are worth Rs 1 crore for Grade A, Rs 50 lakhs for Grade B and Rs 25 lakhs for Grade C.