Ravindra Jadeja strikes gold before IPL 2023 as BCCI reveals Team India's central contracts list, KL Rahul demoted
Ravindra Jadeja has received a handsome promotion in BCCI's central contracts list. Former Indian vice-captain KL Rahul was demoted to the Grade B slab. Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah and Rishabh Pant have retained their respective BCCI contracts.
Veteran Indian all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja has been rewarded for his recent exploits as the star player received a handsome promotion in the newly-released set of annual contracts, announced by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Sunday. Fresh from completing a fairytale comeback to international cricket in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy against Australia, former Chennai Super Kings (CSK) skipper Jadeja has received a decent pay hike ahead of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023.
Joining the likes of all-format skipper Rohit Sharma, ex-captain Virat Kohli and pace ace Jasprit Bumrah, all-rounder Jadeja has become the fourth player to bag a million-dollar BCCI contract for the 2022-2023 season. While Jadeja is the latest entrant in the A+ category, his teammates Rohit, Kohli and Bumrah have retained their contracts worth INR 7 crore.
Rahul demoted, Hardik gets Grade A
While all-rounder Jadeja has been elevated to the Grade A category, former Indian vice-captain Rahul was demoted to the Grade B slab. Opener Rahul remained in Grade A (INR 5 crore) slab from October 2021 to September 2022. Stripped of vice-captaincy, star batter Rahul was also dropped from the Indian playing XI after his series of forgetful knocks during the Australia Test series. Rahul was replaced by in-form opener Shubman Gill, who has been handed a Grade B contract by the BCCI for the 2022-23 season.
India's vice-captain in the limited-overs format, all-rounder Hardik Pandya has been moved up to the Grade A category. In the absence of skipper Rohit, Pandya captained the Kohli-starrer India side in the white-ball formats. Pandya recently made his ODI captaincy debut in the Australia series. Veterans Ajinkya Rahane, Ishant Sharma and Bhuvneshwar Kumar were not named in the list of BCCI's centrally contracted cricketers for the 2022-23 season.
All-rounders Pandya, Ravichandran Ashwin, pacer Mohammed Shami, wicketkeeper-batter Rishabh Pant and all-rounder Axar Patel are featured in the grade A slab (INR 5 crore). All-rounder Patel has been moved to the Grade A slab from the Grade B category. Seasoned campaigners Cheteshwar Pujara, Rahul, Shreyas Iyer, Mohammed Siraj, Suryakumar Yadav and Gill were handed Grade B (INR 3 crore) contracts by the apex cricket board.
The Grade C (INR 1 crore) category features the likes of Umesh Yadav, Shikhar Dhawan, Shardul Thakur, Ishan Kishan, Deepak Hooda, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Washington Sundar, Sanju Samson, Arshdeep Singh and KS Bharat. Earlier in October, the BCCI announced equal pay for centrally contracted men and women Indian cricketers.
