BCCI hikes up retainership for centrally contracted players

New Delhi, Sep 27 (UNI) Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) today hiked the annual retainership amount for a pool of 33 players in all three existing categories while also introducing a fourth grade.

This came after showering cash incentives to the Twenty20 World Cup winning team.

Paceman Zaheer Khan was the lone new name in the elite Grade A of centrally contracted players, which will get Rs 60 lakhs as retainership, an increase of Rs 10 lakhs from the earlier contract.

Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, Anil Kumble, Yuvraj Singh and new ODI captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni were the others in the Grade A while eight players have been placed in Grade B to get a retainership amount of Rs 40 lakhs, a hike of Rs 5 lakhs.

VVS Laxman, Harbhajan Singh, Gautam Gambhir, Wasim Jaffer, S Sreesanth, Dinesh Karthik, R P Singh and Virender Sehwag are in Grade B.

Irfan Pathan, Ajit Agarkar, Ramesh Powar, Munaf Patel, Robin Uthappa, Piyush Chawla and Suresh Raina found a place in Grade C which has a retainership of Rs 25 lakhs.

If a player, who is not offered retainership is selected to play for India in Test or ODI, he will be placed in Grade D.

And if he plays five Tests or 15 ODIs in a year, he will be placed in Grade C from that date and will be paid retainership on pro rata basis, a BCCI release said.

UNI