Mumbai, Apr 21: Indian team stalwarts Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli have retained their A+ category contract despite retiring from the T20I format as the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced the annual player retainership for the men's team for 2024-25 season on Monday.

The top grade BCCI contract awards Rs 7 crore annually other than match fees and incentives. Senior duo of Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja, who has also retired from T20Is, have also retained their A+ category contract. In a notable change, Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan have returned to the contract list with the former getting B category contract while the latter found himself in C category contract list.

The duo were left out last year due to their absence from the domestic matches. Ravichandran Ashwin, who retired from international cricket last cricket, has been replaced by Rishabh Pant in A category contract while other five players remain same in the category. Pant was listed in B category in last season's annual contract list.

The latest additions to the central contracts list, all placed in Grade C, include Nitish Kumar Reddy, Dhruv Jurel, Abhishek Sharma, Sarfaraz Khan, Akash Deep, Varun Chakravarthy and Harshit Rana. Shivam Dube, Jitesh Sharma, KS Bharath and Avesh Khan - who were in category C last season - have been left out of the contract list altogether.

A total of 34 players were handed annual retainership for the 2024-25 season, taking into the account the period of play between October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2025.

Grade A+: Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah, Ravindra Jadeja.

Grade A: Md. Siraj, KL Rahul, Shubman Gill, Hardik Pandya, Md. Shami, Rishabh Pant.

Grade B: Suryakumar Yadav, Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shreyas Iyer.

Grade C: Rinku Singh, Tilak Verma, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Shivam Dube, Ravi Bishnoi, Washington Sundar, Mukesh Kumar, Sanju Samson, Arshdeep Singh, Prasidh Krishna, Rajat Patidar, Dhruv Jurel, Sarfaraz Khan, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Ishan Kishan, Abhishek Sharma, Akash Deep, Varun Chakaravarthy, Harshit Rana.

(IANS)

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