BCCI Announces Annual Central Contracts For 2025, IPL Winning Skipper Retains His Spot In Much-Awaited List

India are trying to revive their situation in the red ball format. India have been an unstoppable force in white ball cricket, winning the Champions Trophy earlier this year, but as far as their credentials as a Test team go, they're under scrutiny.

India started 2025 on a bitter note with a 3-1 loss to Australia in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series. In the process, they also lost an almost assured place in the World Test Championship Final. Despite delivering two ICC trophies in the last nine months, Rohit Sharma 's place in the Indian Test team is being questioned time and again.

Skipper Sharma's performance with the bat in the IND vs NZ home Test series and the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series was far from satisfactory. Things in Australia became so bad that Rohit had to bench himself in the final Test of the series. With a new WTC cycle starting this year in June, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced the central contracts for the senior men's team.

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Here's a category-wise segregation of the Indian players:

• Grade A+: Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli , Ravindra Jadeja, and Jasprit Bumrah
• Grade A: Mohammed Siraj, KL Rahul , Hardik Pandya , Shubman Gill, Mohammed Shami, and Rishabh Pant
• Grade B: Suryakumar Yadav , Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, Yashasvi Jaiswal, and Shreyas Iyer
• Grade C: Rinku Singh, Tilak Verma, Ruturaj Gaikwad , Shivam Dube, Ravi Bishnoi, Washington Sundar, Mukesh Kumar, Sanju Samson , Arshdeep Singh, Prasidh Krishna, Rajat Patidar, Dhruv Jurel, Sarfaraz Khan, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Ishan Kishan, Abhishek Sharma, Akash Deep, Varun Chakaravarthy, and Harshit Rana

A total of 34 players across categories have been handed the central contracts for the upcoming season. The biggest highlight of this list is the return of Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer to the list.

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India To Kickstart Their WTC 2027 Campaign Against England

After the culmination of the ongoing Indian Premier League, the Indian team will travel to England for a five-match Test series. The India vs England Test series starts on June 20, 2025