Mumbai: Former Indian captain MS Dhoni was dropped on Thursday from the BCCI's central contacts list for players for 2019-20. The 38-year-old wicket-keeper-batsman hasn't played competitively since India's World Cup semifinal exit in England.
Dhoni was part of Grade A in the BCCI's central contracts list last year but as he had made himself unavailable since the World Cup, the cricket body left him out from the 27-member list for the period from October 2019 to September 2020.
Dhoni, who has been on a sabbatical since July 2019, has not publicly cleared the uncertainty surrounding his future. In his absence, Rishabh Pant has been preferred as the wicketkeeper in T20Is and ODIs.
Dhoni had retired from Test cricket in December 2014 after playing 90 matches and stepped down as captain of India's limited-overs formats teams in January 2017.Meanwhile, captain Virat Kohli, his deputy Rohit Sharma and pacer Jasprit Bumrah were retained in the highest A+ bracket of Rs 7 crore.
BCCI Central Contracts for 2019-20:
Grade A+ (INR 7 cr): Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah
Grade A (INR 5 cr): Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, KL Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma, Kuldeep Yadav, Rishabh Pant
Grade B (INR 3 cr): Wriddhiman Saha, Umesh Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Hardik Pandya, Mayank Agarwal
Grade C (INR 1 cr): Kedar Jadhav, Navdeep Saini, Deepak Chahar, Manish Pandey, Hanuma Vihari, Shardul Thakur, Shreyas Iyer, Washington Sundar.(UNI)
