BCCI central contracts: Grades, eligibility, and all you need to know

Recently, BCCI released the women’s central contract list featuring 16 players across three grades. Now, there are high chances that the Board of Control for Cricket will soon announce the men’s annual central contracts, with major changes expected this time.

There is speculation that Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan, who were missing from the last contract list, may get a spot once again. However, we need to wait for confirmation. The new list is certainly going to be extremely interesting, as many changes are expected.

Firstly, will Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, and even Ravindra Jadeja—who are no longer part of India’s T20I team after retiring from the format following their T20 World Cup win—retain their A+ grade, or will there be a demotion? Also, which players from Grade C may not receive a contract this time?

There are many aspects to analyse, but do you know what the BCCI central contract list is? How do Indian players get selected? What are the eligibility criteria? Let’s take a look at every crucial detail.

What is a BCCI Contract?

In simple words, it is the annual retainership system or say annual agreement between the Board of Control for Cricket in India and selected Indian cricketers. It outlines their remuneration, responsibilities, and privileges for representing the Indian cricket team across formats during the year.

BCCI Central Contracts Salary

Grade	Amount
A+	Rs. 7 Crore
A	Rs. 5 Crore
B	Rs. 3 Crore
C	Rs. 1 Crore

BCCI match fees structure for Team India

Format	Fees (Approx.)
Test	INR 15 lakh
ODI	INR 6 lakh
T20I	INR 3 lakh

Eligibility to get a BCCI annual contract

Now, speaking about the most important part—how a player gets the BCCI central contract.

To be eligible, players must meet specific criteria based on their participation in international matches within a calendar year:

• Three Test matches OR
• Eight ODIs OR
• Ten T20Is

Meeting any one of these conditions allows players to be considered for inclusion, but they usually start in Grade C.

In addition to this, what we are currently seeing is BCCI’s emphasis on ensuring that players in the central contract also participate in India’s domestic tournaments when they are not playing for the national team. Failure to comply with these obligations can lead to exclusion from the contract list. The best example is Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan, who were removed from the BCCI central contract list after not participating in domestic games.

BCCI Central Contract List 2023-24

Grade A+

Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja.

Grade A

R Ashwin, Mohd. Shami, Mohd. Siraj, KL Rahul, Shubman Gill and Hardik Pandya.

Grade B

Surya Kumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant, Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel and Yashasvi Jaiswal.

Grade C

Rinku Singh, Tilak Verma, Ruturaj Gaekwad, Shardul Thakur, Shivam Dube, Ravi Bishnoi, Jitesh Sharma, Washington Sundar, Mukesh Kumar, Sanju Samson, Arshdeep Singh, KS Bharat, Prasidh Krishna, Avesh Khan and Rajat Patidar, Sarfaraz Khan and Dhruv Jurel.