A couple of months back, the BCCI had come up with the new contracts for the players, where two significant names were missing — Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan. Now BCCI secretary Jay Shah has clarified that the decision to drop the two from the retainers contract’s list was that of chief selector Ajit Agarkar.
The main reason for such a harsh decision was, their unavailability to play domestic cricket. While Ishan Kishan had moved out of the Indian team to take a break, Iyer was injured after the second IND vs ENG Test. But much to the surprise of everyone, the duo decided to ignore the orders of Rahul Dravid and Jay Shah, of not playing the Ranji Trophy.
“You can check the constitution. I am just a convener (of the selection meeting),” he said during a media interaction at the BCCI head office on Thursday. “That decision lies with Ajit Agarkar, even when these two players (Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer) who did not play domestic (cricket), the decision to drop them (from the central contracts list) was only his. My role is just to implement. And we have got new players (in place), like Sanju (Samson). Nobody is indispensable,” he added.
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But the BCCI secretary revealed that it wasn’t a cold-blooded exclusion and he had spoken with the duo after the new contracts were announced. “Yes, I had spoken with them. Media had even carried the reports,” he said.
BCCI Central Contracts List
Grade A+: Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja
Grade A: R Ashwin, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj, KL Rahul, Shubman Gill and Hardik Pandya.
Grade B: Surya Kumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant, Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel and Yashasvi Jaiswal.
Grade C: Rinku Singh, Tilak Verma, Ruturaj Gaekwad, Shardul Thakur, Shivam Dube, Ravi Bishnoi, Jitesh Sharma, Washington Sundar, Mukesh Kumar, Sanju Samson, Arshdeep Singh, KS Bharat, Prasidh Krishna, Avesh Khan and Rajat Patidar.
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