Ashwin Promoted To Grade A India Contract

Ashwin Promoted To Grade A India Contract

R Ashwin has been rewarded for his rise to becoming India's number one spinner in all formats.

©REUTERS/Vivek Prakash. Picture Supplied by Action Images

Off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin is the biggest beneficiary in the latest batch of contracts handed out by the BCCI to India’s national cricketers. He has been promoted from a Grade B to a Grade A deal after cementing himself as India’s leading spinner in all formats, while the man he has usurped in that role, Harbhajan Singh, has been demoted to a Grade B deal.

Another notable change is that the number of players awarded Grade A contracts (those who will receive around $186,000 per year) has shrunk from 12 to nine, with the retired duo of Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman not replaced, and Ishant Sharma joining Harbhajan Singh in being demoted to a Grade B deal.

The BCCI’s central contracts committee consists of president N Srinivasan, Sanjay Jagdale and Sandeep Patil. In addition to the above deals, they have promoted Ajinkya Rahane, Umesh Yadav, Irfan Pathan and Cheteshwar Pujara from Grade C to Grade B, and awarded Grade C deals to Yusuf Pathan, Lakshmipathy Balaji and, for the first time, Ashok Dinda. Shanthakumaran Sreesanth and Jaydev Unadkat have been omitted altogether from the list of contracted players. 

Grade A: (approx $186,000 per annum) Sachin Tendulkar, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Zaheer Khan, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Suresh Raina, Yuvraj Singh, Virat Kohli, Ravichandran Ashwin.

Grade B: (approx $93,000) Harbhajan Singh, Ishant Sharma, Pragyan Ojha, Rohit Sharma, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Irfan Pathan, Umesh Yadav.

Grade C: (around $46,500) Ravindra Jadeja, Amit Mishra, Ranganath Vinay Kumar, Munaf Patel, Abhimanyu Mithun, Murali Vijay, Shikhar Dhawan, Wriddhaman Saha, Parthiv Patel, Manoj Tiwary, Subramaniam Badrinath, Piyush Chawla, Dinesh Karthik, Rahul Sharma, Varun Aaron, Abhinav Mukund, Ashok Dinda, Yusuf Pathan, Praveen Kumar, Lakshmipathy Balaji.

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