Thursday, September 27, 2007

BCCI announces enhanced retainership for top players

Putting an end to the long drawn negotiations on the contentious contracts issue, the BCCI on Thursday announced an enhanced annual retainership amount for a pool of 33 players with top grade cricketers being offered a whopping Rs 60 lakhs.

Having already showered the Twenty20 World Cup winning team with hefty cash incentives, the board carried its magnamity onto the central contracts as well by increasing the retainership amount in existing three categories while also introducing a fourth grade.

Paceman Zaheer Khan was the lone new name in the elite Grade A, which will get Rs 60 lakhs as retainership, an increase of Rs 10 lakhs from the earlier contract.

Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, Anil Kumble, Yuvraj Singh and current ODI captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni were the others in the Grade A while there were eight players in Grade B which had a retainership amount of Rs 40 lakhs.

VVS Laxman, Harbhajan Singh, Gautam Gambhir, Wasim Jaffer, S Sreesanth, Dinesh Karthik, RP Singh and Virender Sehwag have been clubbed in Grade B, which has also seen a hike of Rs 5 lakhs.

Irfan Pathan, Ajit Agarkar, Ramesh Powar, Munaf Patel, Robin Uthappa, Piyush Chawla and Suresh Raina are the players who find a place in Grade C which has a retainership of Rs 25 lakhs.

The young Rohit Sharma, who starred in India's Twenty20 World Cup campaign and Joginder Sharma were among 11 other players who have been accommodated in the Group D introduced for the first time.

Manoj Tiwary, Ishant Sharma, Ranadeb Bose, Mohammad Kaif, Cheteshwar Pujara, Parthiv Patel, S Badrinath, Aakash Chopra and Yusuf Pathan are the other players in that grade which offers a retainership of Rs 15 lakhs.

The BCCI said in a release that a player, who was not offered a retainership and was selected to play for India in Tests or ODIs, would be placed in the Grade D.

"A player in Grade D, if he plays 5 Tests or 15 ODIs in a year, will be placed in Grade C from that date and will be paid retainership on the pro-rata basis," the release said.

According to the earlier contracts, players in Grade A got an annual retainership of Rs 50 lakhs, while the amount was Rs 35 lakhs and Rs 20 lakhs for Grades B and C respectively.

The contracts were finalised by the BCCI's gradation committee, comprising vice-president Shashank Manohar, treasurer N Srinivasan and former president IS Bindra.

Difference between the BCCI officials and the players after the World Cup debacle led to a stalemate on the contract issue forcing the board to extend the 2005-06 contracts by another year.

In the earlier negotiations, Manohar had taken a tough stand and had even called for performance-linked contracts, meaning that players would be rewarded for victories and penalised in case of defeats.

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