The A-plus category (Rs 7 crore per year), which was introduced for the first time last year, had the cream of the Indian men's team - Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah

The Committee of Administrators (CoA) yesterday approved the new central contracts for the Indian men's and women's teams. Though there is no change to their fee structure that was hiked massively when the contracts for October 2017 to September 2018 were released last year in March, the new contracts have quite a few demotions and new inclusions.

The A-plus category (Rs 7 crore per year), which was introduced for the first time last year, had the cream of the Indian men's team — Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah.

This time however, two players have been demoted from the premium category. While Kohli, Rohit and Bumrah will continue to be part of the A-plus category, Dhawan was demoted to A category (Rs 5 crore per year) after losing out on his Test spot.

Bhuvneshwar, who has struggled to keep his place in the playing XI across all formats, was also was dropped to the A-category. Bhuvneshwar last played a Test in South Africa in January 2018. He was part of the five-match ODI and three-match T20I series against New Zealand but was rested for the first two ODIs against Australia.

Meanwhile, Suresh Raina, Jayant Yadav and Axar Patel went out of the BCCI's central contract system. Rishabh Pant made an emphatic entry with a spot in the A category after his stupendous show in Australia. In the women's A-category, Jhulan Goswami, who has retired from the T20 format, was dropped to B grade, while Poonam Yadav was promoted to the top category.

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