BCCI doubled the Annual Retainer Fees paid earlier for Indian cricketers after a board meeting held on Wednesday. The annual retainer amounts have been doubled for all the categories and Grade A players will be paid Rs 2 Crore per annum, Grade B will be paid Rs 1 Crore per annum and Grade C will be paid Rs 50 lakh per annum, which is double the amounts paid in the earlier years. The Match Fee of cricketers has also been enhanced to Rs 15 lakhs per Test, Rs 6 lakhs per ODI and Rs 3 lakhs for T20I. This increment will be effective from Oct 1st 2016 on wards.
Grade A Cricketers: Rs 2 crore per Annum (Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ajinkya Rahane, Cheteshwar Pujara, Murali Vijay and Ravindra Jadeja).
Grade B Cricketers: Rs 1 crore per Annum (Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Jasprit Bumrah, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav, Wriddhiman Saha, Yuvraj Singh).
Grade C Cricketers: Rs 50 lakh per Annum (Shikhar Dhawan, Ambati Rayudu, Amit Mishra, Manish Pandey, Axar Patel, Karun Nair, Hardik Pandya, Jayant Yadav, Ashish Nehra, Yuzvendra Chahal, Parthiv Patel, Kedar Jadhav, Rishabh Pant, Mandeep Singh, Dhawal Kulkarni, Shardul Thakur).
Pujara, Murali Vijay and Ravindra Jadeja have been promoted to Grade A. Last year, Pujara & Vijay were in Grade B and Jadeja in Grade C. KL Rahul and Wriddhiman Saha have been promoted from Grade C to Grade B. Whereas, Shikhar Dhawan was demoted to Grade C because of his poor form.
While Yuvraj Singh is in Grade B, Ashish Nehra managed to be in Grade C. Suresh Raina’s name went missing completely. Even Harbhajan Singh and Gambhir weren’t included in the list. Earlier, the retainer fee was Rs 1 crore for Grade A, Rs 50 lakh for B and Rs 25 lakh for C.