Is this the end of the road for MS Dhoni in the Indian cricket team? It certainly seems that way with his name conspicuously absent from the newly released list of BCCI central contracts.
The BCCI announced central contracts for the period of October 2019 to September 2020. Dhoni, who was in the A category, which fetches a player Rs 5 crore, until last year, is missing from the list.
The contracts are in four categories – A+ (Rs 7 crore), A (Rs 5 crore), B (Rs 3 crore) and C (Rs 1 crore). 27 players have been divided into these four categories, with captain Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah the three in the A+ category.
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The released list has raised fresh doubts about the future of the former Indian captain with Dhoni not having played since the ICC World Cup semifinal loss to New Zealand last year.
Players in other categories:
Category A: Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, KL Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, Mohammad Shami, Ishant Sharma, Kuldeep Yadav and Rishabh Pant.
Category B: Wriddhiman Saha, Umesh Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Hardik Pandya, Mayank Agarwal.
Category C: Kedar Jadhav, Navdeep Saini, Deepak Chahar, Manish Pandey, Hanuma Vihari, Shardul Thakur, Shreyas Iyer, Washington Sundar.