The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is expected to announce the 2025-26 central contracts for the India men’s cricket team around the New Year. The board’s expected to make several changes, starting with Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli getting demoted.
BCCI central contracts 2025-26: Gill goes up, Rohit-Kohli down
According to Sports Tak, the BCCI will announce the central contract in a day or two. The 2025-26 domestic season hasn’t ended, but the board has decided to take an early call. Usually, the contracts are announced in February-March. They were delayed last season until April, and this time around, BCCI has pushed them up.
Since Rohit and Virat have retired from Test cricket, they’ll be either demoted from A+. Meanwhile, Shubman Gill will be promoted to the top level from Grade A. He has been named India’s Test and ODI captain since the last contract. Ravindra Jadeja and Jasprit Bumrah are expected to be demoted.
Mohammed Shami to be axed?
Two fast bowlers from Bengal, Mohammed Shami and Mukesh Kumar, could find themselves excluded from the BCCI 2025-26 central contracts. Shami hasn’t featured for Team India since March, while Mukesh’s last game came in July 2024.
Harshit Rana & Tilak Varma up for promotion?
Tilak Varma, Arshdeep Singh, Prasidh Krishna, Dhruv Jurel, and Harshit Rana. All of them could get promoted. They have become 2-format or 3-format players since the last contracts came out. Most of them aren’t fringe players anymore. Barring Tilak, all have either played Test cricket or been selected for the red-ball team.
Current BCCI Central Contracts (2024-25)
| Grade | Player |
|---|---|
| A+ | Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, Ravindra Jadeja |
| Grade A | Rishabh Pant, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj, KL Rahul, Shubman Gill, Hardik Pandya |
| Grade B | Suryakumar Yadav, Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, Shreyas Iyer, Yashasvi Jaiswal |
| Grade C | Rinku Singh, Tilak Varma, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Shivam Dube, Ravi Bishnoi, Washington Sundar, Mukesh Kumar, Sanju Samson, Arshdeep Singh, Prasidh Krishna, Rajat Patidar, Dhruv Jurel, Sarfaraz Khan, Nitish Reddy, Ishan Kishan, Abhishek Sharma, Akash Deep, Varun Chakravarthy, Harshit Rana |
