India’s cricket team have been given a significant pay rise, with the world’s richest cricket board (BCCI) announcing on Wednesday that it had doubled salaries for the 2016-17 season and hiked match fees across all three of the game’s formats.
According to sources the Indian cricketers were not happy with their pay structure. Some of them who play IPL make a killing while the others are not happy with the kind of money they were getting from the world’s richest cricket board.
Chairman of the Committee of Administrators (CoA) Vinod Rai calls this one of the reasons.
“There are a large number of issues which come into play when we revise them (contracts). It may not be disparity alone but we have to bring about a certain element of consistency between all the parties which are being employed by the BCCI,” said Rai.
According to the new contracts, Grade A players will get Rs.2 crore per season, which is a 100 percent hike. Grade A contracted cricketers are skipper Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Ajinkya Rahane and Murali Vijay.
Interestingly, Saurashtra cricketer Ravindra Jadeja after climbing to the top of the ICC Test rankings for bowlers has been duly rewarded with a Grade A contract. He was earlier in the second tier and will now earn as much as Kohli and Dhoni.
Players in the uppermost ‘A’ category have been put on a retainer of 20 million Indian rupees ($305,000) for the period ending Sept. 20, 2017, up from 10 million rupees last season.
That is still well short of the 700,000 pounds ($870,800) retainers that England’s top cricketers, such as Alastair Cook or Joe Root are on, according to media reports, or the A$1.12 million dollars ($858,816) for Australia captain Steve Smith.
Grade A players will now be paid Rs 2 crore per annum, Grade B will be paid Rs 1 crore per annum and the Grade C players will get Rs 50 lakhs per annum, which is double the amounts paid in the earlier years, a BCCI release said.
Grade A (annual retainer – Rs 2 crore): Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, R Ashwin, Ajinkya Rahane, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ravindra Jadeja, M Vijay
Grade B (annual retainer – Rs 1 crore): Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav, Wriddhiman Saha, Jasprit Bumrah, Yuvraj Singh
Grade C (annual retainer – Rs 50 lakh): Shikhar Dhawan, Ambati Rayudu, Amit Mishra, Manish Pandey, Axar Patel, Karun Nair, Hardik Pandya, Ashish Nehra, Kedar Jadhav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Parthiv Patel, Jayant Yadav, Mandeep Singh, Dhawal Kulkarni, Shardul Thakur, Rishabh Pant.
Notable exceptions from the list of players awarded contracts include off-spinner Harbhajan Singh and left-handed batsman Suresh Raina.Shikhar Dhawan has been demoted to a Grade C contract.
