Rohit and Kohli downgraded; Gill, Bumrah & Jadeja in top tier of BCCI contracts list

Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja have been demoted from Grade A+ while Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli have been pushed to Grade B in the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s (BCCI’s) annual retainers for the ongoing 2025-26 season.

BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia officially announced the list of 30 male and 21 female cricketers who have been awarded central contracts on Monday through a media statement.

While Saikia had earlier stated the BCCI is suspending Grade A+ (₹7 crore), it was surprising to see Bumrah being demoted. While Bumrah still remains a key all-format cricketer for India, the team management has been using him sparingly in bilateral series for the last two years.

While Jadeja has retired from T20Is, Kohli and Rohit are single-format players, having retired from Tests and T20Is.

Jadeja, Bumrah and Shubman Gill, the Test and ODI captain, are the only three cricketers to have been included in the top tier (₹5 crore).

The central contracts: Senior men: Grade A (₹5 crore): Shubman Gill, Jasprit Bumrah, Ravindra Jadeja.

Grade B (₹3 crore): Washington Sundar, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Mohammed Siraj, Hardik Pandya, Rishabh Pant, Kuldeep Yadav, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Suryakumar Yadav, Shreyas Iyer.

Grade C (₹1 crore): Axar Patel, Tilak Varma, Rinku Singh, Shivam Dube, Sanju Samson, Arshdeep Singh, Prasidh Krishna, Akash Deep, Dhruv Jurel, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakaravarthy, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Abhishek Sharma, Sai Sudharsan, Ravi Bishnoi, Ruturaj Gaikwad.

Senior women: Grade A (₹50 lakh): Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandhana, Jemimah Rodrigues, Deepti Sharma.

Grade B (₹30 lakh): Renuka Singh, Shafali Verma, Richa Ghosh, Sneh Rana.

Grade C (₹10 lakh): Radha Yadav, Amanjot Kaur, Pratika Rawal, Kranti Gaud, Uma Chetri, Arundhati Reddy, Sree Charani, Yastika Bhatia, Harleen Deol, Kashvee Gautam, G. Kamalini, Vaishnavi Sharma, Tejal Hasabnis.