Indian Cricket Board releases central contract list; Excludes Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer

The Indian Cricket Board has finally released the much-awaited central contract list of players for 2024. The Board took to Twitter to release the list which includes four categories: A+, A, B, and C. While players like Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma have been acquired in the A+ grade list, there are new entries with the likes of Ruturaj Gaikwad, Tilak Verma, and Rinku Singh. Including young players in the list certainly encourages them to perform more for their country and enhance the game of cricket. This can be regarded as a great move from the Indian board.

While the board has retained the A+ grade players, they have excluded two important players from the entire contract, Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer. This came in as a result of the players opting out of the international and domestic series. While the rumours surfaced around Iyer’s fake medical report of back injury to avoid the Ranji Trophy, Ishan Kishan hasn’t made himself available for any Test series after the ODI World Cup 2023.

Although there were a lot of reports available regarding the exclusion of these players, it was difficult to believe that the Indian Cricket Board had been considering the things they have done for the country. However, the list didn’t have any shocking inclusions or exclusions as people were mostly aware of what was going to happen.

Central Contract List 2024

Grade A+

Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja.

Grade A

R Ashwin, Mohd. Shami, Mohd. Siraj, KL Rahul, Shubman Gill and Hardik Pandya.

Grade B

Surya Kumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant, Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel and Yashasvi Jaiswal.

Grade C

Rinku Singh, Tilak Verma, Ruturaj Gaekwad, Shardul Thakur, Shivam Dube, Ravi Bishnoi, Jitesh Sharma, Washington Sundar, Mukesh Kumar, Sanju Samson, Arshdeep Singh, KS Bharat, Prasidh Krishna, Avesh Khan and Rajat Patidar.