Central Contract 2012-2013 for Indian Players by BCCI announced

Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced its central player contract on Friday.

As always the contracted players are divided into 3 categories: Group A, Group B and Group C. This time the number of players in Grade A was cut down from 12 to 9, Grade B number increased from 5 to 8 while Grade C remained constant at 20 players.

Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman retired while Ishant Sharma and Harbhajan Singh were demoted from Group A.

Praveen Kumar and Ravindra Jadeja were demoted to Group C from Group B last year. Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane and Umesh Yadav were promoted to Group B this year.

Irfan Pathan who didn't got a contract from BCCI last year made a strong comeback and got a place in Group B. This time S. Sreesanth is out of a contract as he is struggling from injuries.

Players in Grade A:

• Sachin Tendulkar
• M S Dhoni
• Zaheer Khan
• Virender Sehwag
• Gautam Gambhir
• Suresh Raina
• Yuvraj Singh
• Virat Kohli
• R Ashwin

Players in Grade B:

• Harbhajan Singh
• Ishant Sharma
• Pragyan Ojha
• Rohit Sharma
• Cheteshwar Pujara
• Ajinkya Rahane
• Irfan Pathan
• Umesh Yadav

Players in Grade C:

• Ravindra Jadeja
• Amit Mishra
• Vinay Kumar
• Munaf Patel
• Abhimanyu Mithun
• Murali Vijay
• Shikhar Dhawan
• Wriddhiman Saha
• Parthiv Patel
• Manoj Tiwary
• S Badrinath
• Piyush Chawla
• Dinesh Karthik
• Rahul Sharma
• Varun Aaron
• Abhinav Mukund
• Ashok Dinda
• Yusuf Pathan
• Praveen Kumar
• L Balaji

A player in Grade A gets a fixed fee of Rs 1 crore per annum, a player in Grade B gets Rs 50 lakh per annum and Rs 25 lakh per annum is paid to players in Grade C.

The players in the playing eleven of the team also get an additional fee:

Test Match: Rs 7 Lakh per match

One-Day Internationals: Rs 4 Lakh per match

Twenty20 Internationals: Rs 2 Lakh per match