TNI Bureau: Ace spinner Harbhajan Singh, who has been going through a rough patch, has been demoted in the top bracket of BCCI’s list of central retainership contract list from Grade A to B. Bhaji had spent most of the time out of the team last year struggling for form. On the other hand, rising off-spinner R Ashwin has been promoted to Grade A, the top bracket in the contract.
The elite Grade A features nine players this year – Sachin Tendulkar, M S Dhoni, Zaheer Khan, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Suresh Raina, Yuvraj Singh, Virat Kohli, R Ashwin three down from the last season while Ashwin was the only player to be promoted to the top grade. The Grade A players are paid an annual retainership of Rs one crore in addition to the certain match fees. Virat Kohli, middle-order batsman Suresh Raina and Yuvraj Singh completed the top category, all three retaining their contracts.
In Grade B, the BCCI has offered contracts to eight players, Harbhajan Singh, Ishant Sharma, Pragyan Ojha, Rohit Sharma, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Irfan Pathan, and Umesh Yadav. In this list Rohit Sharma is the only name to have retained his contract. The players in Grade B are entitled an annual retainership of Rs 50 lakh.
Grade C of the contact list contains 20 names and in this way like last year the BCCI has offered contracts to 37 players.
Grade A:
Sachin Tendulkar, M S Dhoni, Zaheer Khan, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Suresh Raina, Yuvraj Singh, Virat Kohli, R Ashwin
Grade B:
Harbhajan Singh, Ishant Sharma, Pragyan Ojha, Rohit Sharma, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Irfan Pathan, Umesh Yadav
Grade C:
Ravindra Jadeja, Amit Mishra, Vinay Kumar, Munaf Patel, Abhimanyu Mithun, Murali Vijay, Shikhar Dhawan, Wriddhiman Saha, Parthiv Patel, Manoj Tiwary, S Badrinath, Piyush Chawla, Dinesh Karthik, Rahul Sharma, Varun Aaron, Abhinav Mukund, Ashok Dinda, Yusuf Pathan, Praveen Kumar, L Balaji.