Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, along with Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja, have been retained as A+ Grade players as the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced the contracts for the 2024-25 season. Shreyas Iyer (Grade B) and Ishan Kishan (C) make a comeback after being left out of the last list. The announcement is the strongest possible indicator that Rohit will indeed captain the side in the five-Test series starting in England in June.
In all, 34 players have been given central contracts, with 19 of them in the C grade. Rohit, Kohli and Jadeja have been kept in the top tier despite retiring from the T20I format after India’s World Cup win last June. Mohammed Siraj, who recently lost his place in the white-ball team, and Mohammed Shami, who hasn’t played a Test since 2023, are in the A Grade, along with the likes of Rishabh Pant and Shubman Gill.
Shreyas was a controversial omission from the previous list, allegedly because he didn’t make himself available to play a domestic match. Kishan too missed out because of off-field issues. Both are now back in the fray, with Shreyas in particular enjoying an excellent IPL season so far.
New Entrants: Varun Chakravarty, Dhruv Jurel, Harshit Rana, Akash Deep, Sarfaraz Khan, Abhishek Sharma, Nitish Kumar Reddy. The retainers are for the period from October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2025.
| GRADE | NUMBER | PLAYERS |
| A+ | 1 | Rohit Sharma |
| 2 | Virat Kohli | |
| 3 | Jasprit Bumrah | |
| 4 | Ravindra Jadeja | |
| A | 5 | Mohammed Siraj |
| 6 | KL Rahul | |
| 7 | Shubman Gill | |
| 8 | Hardik Pandya | |
| 9 | Mohammed Shami | |
| 10 | Rishabh Pant | |
| B | 11 | Suryakumar Yadav |
| 12 | Kuldeep Yadav | |
| 13 | Axar Patel | |
| 14 | Yashasvi Jaiswal | |
| 15 | Shreyas Iyer | |
| C | 16 | Rinku Singh |
| 17 | Tilak Verma | |
| 18 | Ruturaj Gaikwad | |
| 19 | Shivam Dube | |
| 20 | Ravi Bishnoi | |
| 21 | Washington Sundar | |
| 22 | Mukesh Kumar | |
| 23 | Sanju Samson | |
| 24 | Arshdeep Singh | |
| 25 | Prasidh Krishna | |
| 26 | Rajat Patidar | |
| 27 | Dhruv Jurel | |
| 28 | Sarfaraz Khan | |
| 29 | Nitish Kumar Reddy | |
| 30 | Ishan Kishan | |
| 31 | Abhishek Sharma | |
| 32 | Akash Deep | |
| 33 | Varun Chakaravarthy | |
| 34 | Harshit Rana | |
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