Dhoni Dropped! BCCI announces annual contract for players, ignores MSD

The BCCI on Thursday announced the Annual Player Contracts for Team India for the period starting from October 2019 to September 2020. 

In the list, the team's players are divided into four categories: Grade A+, Grade A, Grade B and Grade C. While Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah have been listed in the Grade A+ category, one notable omission from the player's contract is former skipper MS Dhoni. The news comes in between speculations of the 38-year-old's plan to retire from the game.

While the players in Grade A+ category will receive INR 7 Cr, players in Grade A will get INR 5 Cr and Grade B and Grade C  players will receive INR 3 Cr and INR 1 Cr respectively.

Players like Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammed Shami and Rishabh Pant have been included in the Grade A category and Wriddhiman Saha, Umesh Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Hardik Pandya and Mayank Agarwal in Grade B category.

Shreyas Iyer is in the Grade C category along with Kedar Jadhav, Navdeep Saini, Deepak Chahar, Hanuma Vihar and Washington Sundar.