New Delhi, February 9 Senior stars Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, as expected, were downgraded to Group B in the latest annual central contracts awarded by the BCCI. This also abolished the existing A+ category, which carried a retainership fee of ₹7 crore.
The BCCI awarded central contracts to 30 men and 21 women cricketers, classified into Groups A, B, and C, on Monday.
Shubman Gill, along with senior bowlers Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja, were retained in Group A.
However, the BCCI did not specify the retainership fees for the three categories. With the A+ category being abolished, in previous seasons, Group A was valued at ₹5 crore annually, Group B at ₹3 crore, and Group C at ₹1 crore.
As for Kohli and Rohit, their retirement from Test and T20I cricket effectively makes them players in only one format, and therefore, they could not have been retained in the top category.
It is understood that the A+ category was introduced by the previous Committee of Administrators (COA), at the behest of former India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni. It was intended for excellence across all three formats, and only four individuals – Kohli, Rohit, Jadeja, and Bumrah – qualified for this category over the years.
However, with three of the four retiring from one or two formats, the BCCI did not want only Bumrah to be retained in the A+ category, as the national selection committee is not convinced that Shubman Gill, the Test and ODI captain, is a certainty for all formats after being dropped from the T20 World Cup squad.