Grade B shock for Kohli, Rohit

Former India captains Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, who now play in only one of the three international formats, have been placed in category B of the BCCI’s central contracts list for the 2025-26 season

This marks a drop from the top tier in a new grading system announced on Tuesday.

The contracts, valid from October 1, 2025 to September 30, 2026, include just three players in Category A.

They are Test and ODI captain Shubman Gill, pace leader Jasprit Bumrah, and allrounder Ravindra Jadeja, who is now India’s most experienced active Test cricketer.

Notably, the BCCI has removed the A+ category that existed in the 2024-25 cycle. Kohli, Rohit, Bumrah, and Jadeja were all in that elite group last season, making Gill the biggest mover after he took over as captain of both the Test and ODI teams from Rohit last year.

Category B includes T20I captain Suryakumar Yadav and senior players Rishabh Pant (Test vice-captain), KL Rahul, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shreyas Iyer, Hardik Pandya, Washington Sundar, Kuldeep Yadav, and Mohammed Siraj.

Compared to last season’s setup, the BCCI seems to have combined the previous Grades A and B into a single middle tier for 2025-26, with Washington being a notable beneficiary of this change.

Among the key adjustments, spin-bowling allrounder Axar Patel has been moved down to Category C despite being a regular in white-ball formats and serving as vice-captain of India’s current T20 World Cup team.

The overall men’s contracts list has been reduced from 34 players to 30, with no new additions.

Senior fast bowler Mohammed Shami, who was in Grade A, along with Sarfaraz Khan, Rajat Patidar, and Mukesh Kumar, have been dropped from the latest list.

The BCCI has not revealed the financial details for the three contract categories.

Category C includes a mix of established players and rising talent, such as 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.

List of BCCI-contracted players for 2025-26

Category A: Shubman Gill, Jasprit Bumrah, Ravindra Jadeja.

Category B: Washington Sundar, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, KL Rahul, Mohammed Siraj, Hardik Pandya, Rishabh Pant, Kuldeep Yadav, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Suryakumar Yadav, Shreyas Iyer.

Category C: 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, B Sai Sudharsan, Ravi Bishnoi, Ruturaj Gaikwad.