2 Indian players who were demoted under BCCI's new central contracts list

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced the list of centrally contracted Indian players for the 2022/23 season last night. The board issued a media release, stating the names of the contracted players along with the categories of contracts.

Like the previous season, BCCI has divided the contracts into four categories, based on the salaries. The Indian players with a Grade A+ contract will earn ₹7 crore annually, followed by Grade A contracted players with ₹5 crore. Indian players who have Grade B and Grade C contracts will earn ₹3 crore and ₹1 crore, respectively.

The board has made quite a few changes to the annual contracts list. While the likes of Sanju Samson, Deepak Hooda, Ishan Kishan, and Arshdeep Singh have bagged their maiden contracts, some big names like Ajinkya Rahane, Ishant Sharma, and Bhuvneshwar Kumar have been dropped.

The BCCI also demoted two players because of a decline in their performances over the last 12 months. Here's a list of those two Indian players.

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#1 KL Rahul

India Training Session (Image: Getty)

2022 was not the best year of KL Rahul's international career. The star Indian batter lost the position of the vice-captain due to his inconsistent performances, and quite a few members of the cricket universe felt that he did not deserve a place in India's T20I and Test teams.

Rahul has not played a single T20I match this year, while he was also dropped from the Test playing XI earlier this year during the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series against Australia. The 30-year-old continues to be one of the top Indian players in the ODI format.

Considering Rahul's performances in the recent past, the BCCI decided to demote him in the list of centrally contracted players. In 2021/22, KL Rahul was present in the Grade A category of players, earning an annual salary of ₹5 crore.

However, in the 2022/23 season, Rahul's name appears in the Grade B contract list. His salary has been reduced from ₹5 crore to ₹3 crore.

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#2 Shardul Thakur

England v India - Fifth LV= Insurance Test Match: Day Three (Image: Getty)

The other Indian player to have been demoted in the BCCI's annual central contracts list for the 2022/23 season is all-rounder Shardul Thakur. Like KL Rahul, Thakur is no longer a regular member of India's Test and T20I teams, but he is an important member of the ODI squad.

Speaking of his performance in 2022, Thakur got only one T20I match, where he returned with figures of 2/33 in four overs. He scored 50 runs and bagged 11 wickets in three Tests, while in the ODI format, he aggregated 163 runs and took 22 wickets in 16 games.

Thakur's numbers look decent, but the board has demoted him from the Grade B to Grade C category in the recent list. His salary in the 2021/22 season was ₹3 crore, but it has now come down to ₹1 crore.

Shardul Thakur and KL Rahul will be keen to bring their 'A' game to the table in the upcoming matches and return to their respective previous categories in the 2023/24 season.