Cricket board promotes Raina to Grade A demoting Yuvraj

NEW DELHI - Yuvraj Singh has been dropped from Grade A in the central contracts of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and Suresh Raina promoted to the top grade.

Yuvraj, who has run into poor form and injuries, has been out of the national team for a while now. The dashing left-hander had a disappointing 2010, starting with the World Twenty20 in the West Indies. He was dropped for the Asia Cup but returned to the Tests in Sri Lanka in July-August. After scoring a fifty in the first innings of the first Test, he missed the second with viral fever and his replacement Raina grabbed the opportunity scoring a century on debut. With Raina cementing his place in the side, Yuvraj has gone back to domestic cricket to try and regain his form.

Virat Kohli, Murali Vijay and Pragyan Ojha have been rewarded for their good performances and they have been promoted to Grade B, while Rohit Sharma has been dropped to Grade C.

Pacers R.P. Singh and Munaf Patel, who were earlier in Grade B, have been excluded altogether from the contracts. Joining them is Dinesh Karthik, who has been in and out of the national squad as second wicketkeeper and opening batsman.

Karnataka seamers Abhimanyu Mithun and R.Vinay Kumar, who made it to the national side with impressive showing in domestic cricket, have made the cut and are in Grade C.

Another youngster Cheteshwar Pujara, who scored an impressive half-century against Australia in his debut Test, has also been included in Grade C.

The board has also reduced the total number of contracted players from 41 to 24 and scrapped Grade D. However, there has been sizeable increase in the pay packages.

The annual retainer has been increased from Rs. 60 lakh to Rs. 1 crore ($135,594 to $225,990) for Grade A and from Rs 40 lakh to Rs. 50 lakh ($90,396 to $112,995) for Grade B. For Grade C, the amount remains Rs. 25 lakhs ($56,498).

The match fee for a player in the Test eleven is Rs. 7 lakhs, for ODI Rs. 4 lakhs and Rs. 2 lakhs in Twenty20. The match fee for non-playing squad members will be 50 per cent of the fee.

If a non-contracted player is selected to play for team India, he will be given a pro-rata contract in the ‘C’ Grade.

Grade A: Sachin Tendulkar, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid, V. V. S. Laxman, Suresh Raina, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan

Grade B: Yuvraj Singh, Ishant Sharma, Ashish Nehra, Praveen Kumar, Virat Kohli, Murali Vijay, Pragyan Ojha

Grade C: S Sreesanth, Amit Mishra, R. Ashwin, Rohit Sharma, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ravindra Jadeja, Abhimanyu Mithun, Vinay Kumar