Shafali Verma promoted to Grade B in BCCI annual player contracts

Teenager Shafali Verma has been promoted to Grade B in the BCCI's annual contracts list. As many as 19 women cricketers were offered contracts, which is three less than the players contracted last year. Veda Krishnamurthy and Ekta Bisht are the most notable absentee among them. The others, who were dropped include Dayalan Hemlatha and spinner Anuja Patil, who featured in the last year's list.

In the Grade A category the annual retainer fees of INR 50 lakh once again comprised of three all-format players -- T20I captain Harmanpreet Kaur, her deputy Smriti Mandhana and leg-break bowler Poonam Yadav.

Grade B has an annual retainer fee of INR 30 lakh and veterans such as Jhulan Goswami, Mithali Raj and Deepti Sharma are among 10 players in this bracket. "Shafali is seen as the biggest superstars that we will have in years to come and hence it wasn't a surprise that she got elevated to Grade B from C. Punam Raut was rewarded for her good show in the South Africa series and she has also been promoted to Grade B," a senior BCCI official said.

Young Richa Ghosh is one among six cricketers in Garde C, which is worth INR 10 lakh. There were as many as 11 cricketers in the 2019-20 retention list.

The contracts are for a period from October 2020 to September 2021.

Grade A (INR 50 lakh): Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandhana, Poonam Yadav

Grade B (INR 30 lakh): Mithali Raj, Jhulan Goswami, Deepti Sharma, Punam Raut, Rajeshwari Gayakwad, Shafali Verma, Radha Yadav, Shikha Pandey, Taniya Bhatia, Jemimah Rodrigues

Grade C (INR 10 lakh): Mansi Joshi, Arundhati Reddy, Pooja Vastrakar, Harleen Deol, Priya Punia, Richa Ghosh.

(With inputs from PTI)