BCCI doubles central contracts; Vijay, Jadeja elevated to Grade A

Ravindra Jadeja, Cheteshwar Pujara and Murali Vijay have been rewarded for their consistent showing and have been upgraded to Grade A along with captain Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, Ravichandran Ashwin and Ajinkya Rahane. All players in Grade A will now be awarded Rs 2 crore as opposed to the earlier amount of Rs 1 crore. 

The other big news coming out is that Harbhajan Singh and Suresh Raina have been excluded from the list of central contracts. Raina was part of Grade B earlier, while Harbhajan Singh was part of Grade C. 

Test opener KL Rahul and wicket-keeper Wriddhiman Saha have been upgraded to Grade B. Veteran batsman Yuvraj Singh, who was not given a contract last year is back in the reckoning after making a comeback to the Indian ODI squad earlier this year and has also been handed a Grade B contract. 

Shikhar Dhawan has been downgraded to Grade C from Grade B. Gujarat paceman Jasprit Bumrah has been included in the central contracts for the first time and so are the likes of Rishabh Pant, Hardik Pandya, Kedar Jadhav and Jayant Yadav among a few others. 

All players in Grade B will now be awarded Rs 1 crore as opposed to the earlier amount of Rs 50 lakhs, while the amount for Grade C players has been hiked to Rs 50 lakhs from Rs 25 lakhs. 

The COA also decided to increase the match fee for the players and they will now be paid Rs 15 lakhs per Test, Rs 6 lakhs per ODI and Rs 3 lakhs for T20 International, effective from October 1.