Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan are back on the BCCI's central contracts list for 2024-25 after being left out of it the previous time. The top tier of the contracts (A+) has four players - Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja. That's unchanged apart from R Ashwin, who retired from international cricket late last year, being dropped. Rohit, Kohli and Jadeja have been retained in the top category despite retiring from T20Is after India won the T20 World Cup in June last year. Rishabh Pant has been promoted from Grade B to Grade A, which also has Mohammed Siraj, KL Rahul, Shubman Gill, Hardik Pandya and Mohammed Shami.

Pant had previously been in Grade A - for the 2022-23 season - but was moved down to Grade B after not playing for over a year following a horrific car crash in December 2022. He returned to play IPL 2024 and has since been part of all formats for India - he's played ten Tests, one ODI and ten T20Is since then - and has returned to Grade A. Iyer, meanwhile, is part of Grade B along with Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, Yashasvi Jaiswal and India T20I captain Suryakumar Yadav, while Kishan has been added to Grade C.

The new entrants in the contracts' list - all currently in Grade C - are Nitish Kumar Reddy, Dhruv Jurel, Abhishek Sharma, Sarfaraz Khan, Akash Deep, Varun Chakravarthy and Harshit Rana. Shardul Thakur, KS Bharat, Avesh Khan and Jitesh Sharma, who were all in the Grade C list - the lowest of the retainers - last year, have been dropped.The BCCI did not mention the amounts for the four contract categories, but ESPNcricinfo understands that they are likely to be INR 7 crore (A+), INR 5 crore (A), INR 3 crore (B) and INR 1 crore (C).

Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP)