Suresh Raina and Harbhajan Singh were some big names failing to secure central contracts from the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) for the upcoming season.
In the recently released list of centrally contracted players, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ravindra Jadeja and Murali Vijay have been promoted to Grade A. The supreme court appointed Committee of Administrators (COA), which met on Wednesday (March 22), announced the list and also decided to double the annual retainer amounts. Grade A players will receive INR 2 Crore per annum while Grade B and C cricketers will be paid INR 1 Crore and INR 50 Lakh respectively.
A total of 32 players, categorised under three different grades, were awarded central contracts which are effective from 1 October 2016 to 30 September 2017.
Meanwhile, there are several players who have been released from the central contracts. The notable players in the list are middle-order batsman Suresh Raina and veteran off-spinner, Harbhajan Singh.
Raina, who has been struggling to perform well, last played an ODI and Test in 2015 while he made a comeback to the T20 side during the England series earlier this year. The southpaw was named the captain of the Uttar Pradesh team in the Vijay Hazare Trophy but didn’t participate in the domestic 50-over tournament.
He also failed to find a place in the India Blue or India Red squads for Deodhar Trophy. The Uttar Pradesh star was was one of the Grade A players in 2014-15, and was dropped to Grade B the last term.
On the other hand, Harbhajan, who was demoted to Grade C in previous last list of centrally contracted players, last played for India in 2016 during the Asia Cup game against UAE. Interestingly, he has been named in the India Blue squad for the upcoming Deodhar Trophy.
Here is a list of all those players and their respective Grades last year:
| Suresh Raina (Grade B) |
| Stuart Binny (Grade C) |
| Mohit Sharma (Grade C) |
| Varun Aaron (Grade C) |
| Karn Sharma (Grade C) |
| Harbhajan Singh (Grade C) |
| S Aravind (Grade C) |