BCCI Contracts: Jadeja and Pujara rewarded for their performances with Grade A contracts

Jadeja, Pujara, and Murali Vijay have been rewarded for their consistent recent performances by the Committee of Administrators (COA), which upgraded their contracts to A grade. They will get RS. 1 Crore per annum alongside skipper Virat Kohli, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Ravichandran Ashwin, and Ajinkya Rahane. All grade A players were getting 1 crore rupees earlier.

Harbhajan and Raina meanwhile have been excluded from central contracts, owing to their absence from the team in recent times. Raina earlier had a B-grade contract, Harbhajan had a C grade contract.

Test opener KL Rahul and keeper Wriddhiman Saha have been upgraded to B grade contracts, while Yuvraj Singh who has made a comeback to the one-day team, is given a B grade contract, after missing out from the national team last year.

Meanwhile, Shikhar Dhawan has been downgraded from Grade B to Grade C, while Jasprit Bumrah, Rishabh Pant, Hardik Pandya, Kedar Jadhav, and Jayant Yadav have all been given a central contract for the very first time.

The doubling of prize money means that all players in Grade B will now be awarded Rs 1 crore as opposed to the earlier amount of Rs 50 lakhs, while the amount for Grade C players has been hiked to Rs 50 lakhs from Rs 25 lakhs.

The COA has also decided that the players will be paid the following match fees from 1st October 2016: Rs 15 lakhs per Test, Rs 6 lakhs per ODI and Rs 3 lakhs for T20 International.  

Grade A: Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, R Ashwin, Ajinkya Rahane, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ravindra Jadeja, Murali Vijay

Grade B: Rohit Sharma,KL, Rahul, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav, Wriddhiman Saha, Jasprit Bumrah, Yuvraj Singh

Grade C: Yuzvendra Chahal, Parthiv Patel, Jayant Yadav, Mandeep Singh, Dhawal Kulkarni, Shardul Thakur, Rishabh Pant.