The Board of Control for Cricket in India has released its central contract list for the 2025-26 season, triggering widespread discussion after a significant reshuffle at the top. Only three players from the men’s team have been placed in the highest contract bracket, while senior stars Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli have been moved down a grade. The announcement also marks a structural change in BCCI’s grading system, reflecting a revised approach to player contracts and performance assessment.
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BCCI announces Annual Player Retainership for Team India Senior Men and Senior Women for the 2025-26 season#TeamIndia | Details 🔽https://t.co/Rd3pUCPRr9 pic.twitter.com/UNYRThs1kW
— BCCI (@BCCI) February 9, 2026
Only Three Players In Top Grade
Grade A-Shubman Gill, Jasprit Bumrah, Ravindra Jadeja
Grade B-Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, KL Rahul, Washington Sundar, Mohammed Siraj, Hardik Pandya, Rishabh Pant, Kuldeep Yadav, Suryakumar Yadav, Yashasvi Jaiswal, 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 Sudharsan, Ravi Bishnoi, Ruturaj Gaikwad
Grade System Overhauled
The BCCI has also overhauled its grading structure. Earlier, the central contract system had four categories: A+, A, B and C. This has now been reduced to three grades: A, B and C. The scrapping of the A+ category has directly impacted senior players who were previously placed at the very top of the hierarchy.
In the 2024-25 season, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja were all part of the highest grade. While Bumrah and Jadeja have managed to retain top-grade contracts, Sharma and Kohli have seen a clear demotion.
Notably, Jadeja remains the only Grade A player who is active in just two formats, having retired from T20 internationals. The revised contract list reflects the BCCI’s sharper focus on format-wise involvement, recent performances and long-term planning for Team India.