Yuvraj, Kohli and Ishant promotes to Grade A contracts

The cricket control board of India BCCI Working committee has announced the contract grades of players in Kolkata. The all-rounder Yuvraj Singh, Virat Kohli and pacer Ishant Sharma were named in the Grade A contract list. Surprisingly Ashish Nehra has been omitted from the list of Contract players.

Yuvraj Singh was back to Grade A list of contract, after being demoted to Grade B following his disastrous form where he almost loses his place in the team. Yuvi was to Grade A after his Man-of-the-Series performance in the World Cup. While Virat Kohli consistent performance scored 995 runs in 2010 and over 1000 runs in 2011ensured his place as Grade A player. Ishant Sharma has raised his game standards and been performing well at the highest level for India gained him Grade A. 

However, the surprising omission was Ashish Nehra, who was part of India's winning World Cup campaign and a B-Grade player last year. Earlier he was ignored for England one-day series, where he expressed his disfavor over exclusion. He even publicly claimed his wonder after also being announced he was fit to play.

The spinners who were showing most significant performance in recent times, R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja were promoted to Grade B, in addition with Rohit Sharma who moved from Grade C. Rahul Sharma, whe need to make his debut for Team India was also earned a contract, coming in at Grade C after being part of the T20, ODI and recent Test squads for India. 

The other important major decision taken by BCCI committee was IPL matches will now be a List A matches. Until now the domestic 50-over competitions, with some 40-over ones also included recently are under List A matches, but now IPL matches will now be added to the list.

Contracted Players List: 

Grade A: (Rs. 1 crore per annum) MS Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Suresh Raina, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Yuvraj Singh, Virat Kohli, Ishant Sharma. 

Grade B: (Rs. 50 lakhs per annum) Praveen Kumar, Pragyan Ojha, R Ashwin, Rohit Shamra, Ravindra Jadeja. 

Grade C: (Rs. 25 lakhs per annum) S Sreesanth, Amit Mishra, Cheteshwar Pujara, Abhimanyu Mithun, Vinay Kumar, Ajinkya Rahane, Munaf Patel, Murali Vijay, Shikhar Dhawan, Wridhiman Saha, Parthiv Patel, S Badrinath, Manoj Tiwary, Piyush Chawla, Dinesh Kartik, Jaidev Unadkat, Umesh Yadav, Rahul Sharma, Varun Aaron.