Kohli, Rohit Sharma demoted to grade B in BCCI’s new contract list
Kohli and Sharma, now playing only in the 50-over format, were pushed down from Grade A to Grade B.
Indian cricketers Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, who have retired from Test and T20 international cricket, had their India central contracts downgraded yesterday (9 February).
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced a major restructuring of the men's central contracts, reducing the system to three categories: A, B, and C; and scrapping the A+ grade.
Kohli and Sharma, now playing only in the 50-over format, were pushed down from Grade A to Grade B.
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India's new Test and ODI captain Shubman Gill has been promoted for the first time to Grade A, joining Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja.
Sai Sudharsan is the only new entrant in the men's central contract list, receiving a contract for the first time. Players including Sarfaraz Khan, Mohammed Shami, Ishan Kishan, Rajat Patidar, and Mukesh Kumar missed out on contracts this season.
The BCCI did not disclose salaries for each category, though last year the top contracts carried an annual pay of $772,000.
A total of 30 senior men's cricketers were awarded central contracts across the three tiers.
Here are the full men's central contracts list for the 2025-26 period:
A category: Shubman Gill, Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja.
B category: Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant, KL Rahul, Hardik Pandya, Washington Sundar, Mohammed Siraj, Kuldeep Yadav, Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shreyas Iyer.
C category: Axar Patel, Shivam Dube, Varun Chakaravarthy, Abhishek Sharma, Rinku Singh, Tilak Varma, Arshdeep Singh, Sanju Samson, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Prasidh Krishna, Akash Deep, Dhruv Jurel, Harshit Rana, Sai Sudharsan, Ravi Bishnoi and Ruturaj Gaikwad.
