Annual Contracts: Here's the amount the Grade A Indian players are likely to get

The Committee of Administrators (COA) is all set to release the contracts for all the Indian cricketers soon. All the players across the board including the Indian Women’s team and even the U19 cricketers will get a huge pay hike in the new contracts. Moreover, there is a possibility that the Grade A players will get a retainer fee in the range of Rs 12 Crore per annum. However, CoA will roll out the contracts after getting the nod from Supreme Court.

The Indian skipper Virat Kohli had last year expressed his reservations regarding the payments made to the cricketers and had a meeting with the top officials of the board along with the head coach Ravi Shastri. The central contracts are expected to be announced before the Men in Blue leave for Sri Lanka to participate in the Nidahas Trophy in which Bangladesh is the third team and will commence on March 6.

Currently, the players receive the retainership of Rs 2 Crores, Rs 1 Crore and Rs 50 Lakhs in A, B and C categories respectively. The Indian board had doubled the retainers for all the contracted in March last year as the players were not happy with the proposed hike.

25 cricketers to receive annual contracts

The senior BCCI official revealed some of the details regarding the revised contracts and also hinted for a huge pay hikes to the cricketers. “Players across the board – the Indian men’s team, the national women’s side, the domestic and even the India Under-19 cricketers are set for a big pay hike soon. This has almost been finalised,” he was quoted as saying by Times of India.

There was also talk of introducing a new A+ grade for some of the elite cricketers but for now, the revised contracts are being offered in A, B and C categories. “Before the Indian team leaves for Sri Lanka for the Nidahas Trophy, around 25 cricketers, divided into three categories (A, B & C) will receive their annual contracts. We waited for the finance committee to approve this pay rise, but it has neither met nor reverted to us on the issue. We need to give the contracts to the players before IPL, as we need to ensure them if they miss any matches in the league due to injury while playing for India,” the source revealed.

According to CoA, it is important to sign the central contracts will the IPL set to start in April as it will ensure that the players will become the beneficiaries of the BCCI insurance cover if they have to miss the IPL games due to injuries.

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