BCCI to do away with elite A+ contract category

The retirements of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma from Test cricket and T20 Internationals, and Ravindra Jadeja from the shortest format, have made the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) rethink the topmost A+ category of Annual Central Contracts. Board secretary Devajit Lon Saikia has confirmed that due to a lack of players playing all three formats and meeting the required criteria, the category will be scrapped in the upcoming retainership cycle.

The BCCI’s central contracts are annual retainers that offer significant financial security to India’s top cricketers. The system is divided into four categories — A+, A, B and C — with annual payouts of Rs 7 crore, Rs 5 crore, Rs 3 crore, and Rs 1 crore, respectively. However, the A+ bracket will no longer feature any players going forward, as there are currently no cricketers who play regularly across all three formats of the game.

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Explaining the rationale behind scrapping the topmost category, Saikia said that the players who were eligible for the A-plus category are now playing just one of the three formats. In the last annual contracts, only four players — Rohit, Virat, Jadeja, and Jasprit Bumrah — were included in the A+ category.

Now with Rohit and Virat exclusively playing the ODI format, and Jadeja featuring in Tests and ODIs, Bumrah is now the sole all-format player among them. Saikia said that the players featuring in a single format are not eligible for the category, and hence the BCCI was forced to do away with the elite A+ bracket that was introduced in 2018.

“There are not many all-format players currently, and hence the board had to rethink retaining the top bracket. Last year, there were four players in the A+ category, but since the three of them (Rohit, Virat, and Jadeja) are now limited to a single format or two, only Bumrah is among the few to feature in all three formats,” Saikia said.

Saikia had also assured that Bumrah, the only three-format player in the category, won’t experience a pay cut. Multiple sources have suggested that the restructuring of the annual central contracts could see players in the A category earning Rs 7 crore, which means Bumrah will join the likes of Test captain Shubman Gill in that bracket.

In contrast, Rohit and Virat could be moved to a lower category given their single-format availability.