Maiden central contract for Siraj, Gill

A total of 28 cricketers were awarded central contracts in four categories

New Delhi: The star trio of India captain Virat Kohli, his white-ball deputy Rohit Sharma and pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah retained their top bracket BCCI contracts, worth Rs 7 crore each, even as some fast-rising youngsters were also rewarded by the Board on Thursday.

A total of 28 cricketers were awarded central contracts in four categories. All-rounder Hardik Pandya is one of the notable promotions to Grade A, which is worth Rs 5 crore, while rookies Shubman Gill and Mohammed Siraj have got their maiden central contracts worth Rs 1 crore in Grade C.

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Among the demotions, pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar has dropped to Grade B, which is worth Rs 3 crore, while Kedar Jadhav has been dropped for good.

The list of BCCI’s annual contracts:

GRADE A+ (Rs 7 crore): Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah.
GRADE A (Rs 5 crore): R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Shikhar Dhawan, KL Rahul, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma, Rishabh Pant, Hardik Pandya.
GRADE B (Rs 3 crore): Wriddhiman Saha, Umesh Yadav, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Shardul Thakur, Mayank Agarwal.
GRADE C (Rs 1 crore): Kuldeep Yadav, Navdeep Saini, Deepak Chahar, Shubman Gill, Hanuma Vihari , Axar Patel, Shreyas Iyer, Washington Sundar, Yuzvendra Chahal, Mohammed Siraj.

SC adjourns BCCI hearing; top office-bearers to stay on

The Supreme Court of India on Thursday adjourned the case pertaining to the BCCI and will hear it after two weeks leaving the Indian cricket board’s top office-bearers Sourav Ganguly, Jay Shah and Jayesh George with more time to stay in charge of affairs.

The tenures of all three, the BCCI president Ganguly, secretary Shah and joint secretary George had ended in 2020. However, the three have continued as the Supreme Court (SC) hasn’t been able to take up the matter. The SC had earlier deferred the matter on December 9 into the new year. After that in February, the Court adjourned the matter to March.

The continuous delay has ensured that neither Ganguly nor Shah or George have been replaced. The new BCCI constitution makes it mandatory for its office-bearers — president, vice-president, secretary, joint secretary, and treasurer — to go into a three-year cooling-off period after being in the chair for six consecutive years, either in the BCCI or its affiliate state associations, or a combination of both.

The person can return for another term of three years after the cooling-off period (a person can be an office-bearer in the BCCI for a maximum of nine years and another nine years in a state association). And this is one of the seven crucial rules, on which the edifice of the new constitution is erected, and which the BCCI wants amended. Any such amendment would allow the present office-bearers to continue in the chair.

After being elected BCCI president on October 23 in 2019, Ganguly had only 278 days to remain as the BCCI chief as his previous tenure at the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) was added to his BCCI term (he had joined the CAB as a joint secretary on July 2014). So, his BCCI term effectively ended on July 26, 2020.

Secretary Shah, according to reports published in mainstream newspapers in 2013, took over as joint secretary of the Gujarat Cricket Association (GCA) on September 8, 2013, though he was a GCA executive before that. And he has been associated with the GCA since. So, his tenure, too, has got over some time ago.

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