BCCI contracts: Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma may be moved to Grade B

MUMBAI: India's premier pacer Jasprit Bumrah, ODI and Test skipper Shubman Gill and seasoned allrounder Ravindra Jadeja are the lone 3 players who volition beryllium fixed Grade A cardinal contracts for 2025-26 by the BCCI, portion erstwhile captains Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, who play lone the ODI format now, person been kept successful the 'B' category, TOI has exclusively learnt.

Kohli and Rohit are some modern-day legends and were successful the A+ class earlier, but person been moved to the B class arsenic they present play lone 1 retired of 3 formats.

Overall, 30 Indian players volition beryllium fixed the BCCI cardinal contracts for the 2025-26 season, arsenic per the recommendations of the nationalist selectors. The Board is expected to officially denote the database of contracted players soon.

Bumrah, India's premier pacer crossed formats and team's onslaught bowler, was successful the A+ category, and truthful was Jadeja.

For Gill, being retained successful the A class of cardinal contracts is simply a large root of alleviation aft being dropped from India's T20 squad conscionable up of the 2026 T20 World Cup astatine home. Like Kohli and Rohit, Jadeja has retired from T20Is, but helium inactive features successful Tests and ODIs, wherever helium has been successful mediocre signifier of late.

TOI had reported successful its Jan 21 variation that BCCI was acceptable to marque a large overhaul successful its Annual Central Contracts system, with sweeping changes that could importantly reshape the hierarchy of Indian cricket’s elite players, for the 2025-26 season.

The Ajit Agarkar-led nationalist enactment committee had projected doing distant with the prestigious Grade A+ category, which was introduced backmost successful 2018 altogether, a determination that straight impacted elder stalwarts Kohli and Rohit.Including Rohit and Virat, determination are 11 players Who volition beryllium fixed Grade ‘B’ cardinal contracts by the BCCI. The others successful this class are: Off-spinning allrounder Washington Sundar, Test opener and ODI 'keeper-batter KL Rahul, elder pacer Mohammed Siraj, white-ball allrounder Hardik Pandya, India's Test vice-captain Rishabh Pant, Chinaman bowler Kuldeep Yadav, India's Test and ODI opener Yashasvi Jaiswal, India's T20 skipper Suryakumar Yadav, and ODI middle-order batter Shreyas Iyer.Grade C contracts volition beryllium fixed to 16 players-Axar Patel, Tilak Varma, Rinku Singh, Shivam Dube, Sanju Samson, Arshdeep Singh, Prasidh Krishna, Akash Deep, Dhruv Jurel, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakravarthy, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Abhishek Sharma, Sai Sudarshan, Ravi Bishnoi and Ruturaj Gaikwad.Jemimah promoted to A class contractMeanwhile, successful the lawsuit of the Indian women’s team, the biggest gainer successful the lawsuit of yearly retainership for 2025-26 is India’s 2025 World Cup semifinal leader Jemimah Rodrigues, who has been promoted to the A category, wherever she joins skipper Harmanpreet Kaur, vice-captain Smriti Mandhana and ace allrounder Deepti Sharma. Rodrigues, who captained Delhi Capitals to the last successful the recently-concluded Women’s Premier League, had slammed superb 127 not retired disconnected 134 balls to manner a stunning five-wicket triumph implicit Australia successful the semifinal of the 2025 Women’s ODI World Cup successful Oct-Nov past twelvemonth astatine the DY Patil Stadium successful Navi Mumbai. Before that game, the Mumbai batter had smashed 76 not retired disconnected 55 balls against New Zealand to lend to India’s triumph successful a do-or-die crippled for them astatine the aforesaid venue.The database of men’s contracts for 2025-26Grade A: Jasprit Bumrah, Shubman Gill and Ravindra Jadeja.Grade B: Washington Sundar, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, KL Rahul, Mohammed Siraj, Hardik Pandya, Rishabh Pant, Kuldeep Yadav, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Suryakumar Yadav, Shreyas Iyer. Grade C: Axar Patel, Tilak Varma, Rinku Singh, Shivam Dube, Sanju Samson, Arshdeep Singh, Prasidh Krishna, Akash Deep, Dhruv Jurel, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakravarthy, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Abhishek Sharma, Sai Sudarshan, Ravi Bishnoi, Ruturaj Gaikwad.List of Women players for 2025-26 contractsGrade A: Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandhana, Jemimah Rodrigues, Deepti Sharma.Grade B: Renuka Thakur, Shafali Verma, Richa Ghosh, Sneh Rana.Grade C: Radha Yadav, Amanjot Kaur, Pratika Rawal, Kranti Gaud, Uma Chhetri (wk), Arundhati Reddy, Shree Charini, Yastika Bhatia, Harleen Deol, Kashvi Gautam, G Kamlini (wk), Vaishnavi Sharma, Tejal Hasbnis.