Hardik Pandya, Ajinkya Rahane and Cheteshwar Pujara demoted in BCCI's central contracts

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Wednesday released an updated list for the new central contracts for Indian cricketers. In the new list, former India vice-captain in Test cricket Ajinkya Rahane and Cheteshwar Pujara were demoted after being dropped for the upcoming Test series against Sri Lanka. The Test specialists who were unable to perform in the Test series against South Africa are no longer a part of the A grade contracts that are issued by the BCCI.

Ajinkya Rahane and Cheteshwar Pujara have been demoted to BCCI's B grade central contract which gives an annual retainership fee of Rs 3 crore. 

Indian fast-bowling all-rounder is another notable omission from the A grade contract which gives Rs 5 crore per annum. Hardik Pandya has been out of the Indian team due to injury concerns since the T20 World Cup in UAE which may have been a reason for the BCCI to demote him to the C category which gives Rs 1 crore per annum.

Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah are the only cricketers with an A+ contract that pays them Rs 7 crore per annum. 

Here is the list according to the categories and the players' that feature in.

Grade A: Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Rishabh Pant, KL Rahul and Mohammed Shami

Grade B: Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Axar Patel, Shardul Thakur, Shreyas Iyer, Mohammed Siraj and Ishant Sharma.

Grade C: Shikhar Dhawan, Umesh Yadav, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Hardik Pandya, Washington Sundar, Shubman Gill, Hanuma Vihari, Yuzvendra Chahal, Suryakumar Yadav, Wriddhiman Saha, Mayank Agarwal and Deepak Chahar.