The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Monday announced the Annual Player Retainership for the 2025–26 season for both the senior men’s and women’s national teams, implementing a revised contract grade structure and reporting the annual retainer amounts for each category.
Under the updated framework, the annual retainers are structured into three grades, A, B and C. In previous cycles, a top-tier Grade A+ category was included, carrying the highest retainership.
For the senior men’s team, Shubman Gill, Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja have been placed in Grade A, the highest category of central contracts.
Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli have been placed in Grade B, alongside KL Rahul, Hardik Pandya, Rishabh Pant, Mohammed Siraj, Kuldeep Yadav, Washington Sundar, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Suryakumar Yadav and Shreyas Iyer. The change marks the first time in recent years that both Rohit and Kohli are not part of the top contract bracket.
A total of 18 players have been named in Grade C, comprising 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 and Ruturaj Gaikwad.
In the senior women’s contracts, Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandhana, Jemimah Rodrigues and Deepti Sharma have been placed in Grade A.
Grade B features Renuka Thakur, Shafali Verma, Richa Ghosh and Sneh Rana.
The Grade C list includes Radha Yadav, Amanjot Kaur, Pratika Rawal, Kranti Goud, Uma Chetry, Arundhati Reddy, Sree Charani, Yastika Bhatia, Harleen Deol, Kashvee Gautam, G. Kamalini, Vaishnavi Sharma and Tejal Hasabnis.
The contracts will be valid for the period from October 1, 2025 to September 30, 2026, as part of the BCCI’s annual retainership cycle.
– Magizh
