BCCI Central Contracts: Rohit, Virat retained in top grade; Iyer, Kishan back
New Delhi(PTI): India's Test and ODI captain Rohit Sharma and batting talisman Virat Kohli retained their place in the top category, while the out-of-favour duo of Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan returned to the fold in lower brackets in a 34-strong list of contracted players released by the BCCI on Monday.
The A+ grade, which commands an annual retainership fee of Rs seven crore, also features Ravindra Jadeja and pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah much like the last few years.
India's Champions trophy hero Iyer has been the notable comeback in the list, inducted in group B which comes with an annual remuneration of Rs three crore.
Iyer was dropped last season for allegedly ignoring domestic cricket for IPL. Wicketkeeper-batter Ishan Kishan. dropped for the same reason, also made a comeback in category C, which is worth Rs one crore annually.
Rishabh Pant, who was demoted to group B during the 2023-24 season as he didn't play due to his recovery from a life-threatening accident, is back in A category in place of the retired Ravichandran Ashwin. Category A comes with a retainership of Rs five crore annually.
Category C features the maximum number of players, 19 in all, with four new entrants in Harshit Rana, Varun Chakravarthy, Abhishek Sharma and Nitish Kumar Reddy.
BCCI central contracts list:
A+ category: Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah, Ravindra Jadeja
A category: Mohammed Siraj, KL Rahul, Shubman Gill, Hardik Pandya, Mohammed Shami, Rishabh Pant
B category: Suryakumar Yadav, Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shreyas Iyer
C category: Rinku Singh, Tilak Verma, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Shivam Dube, Ravi Bishnoi, Washington Sundar, Mukesh Kumar, Sanju Samson, Arshdeep Singh, Prasidh Krishna, Rajat Patidar, Dhruv Jurel, Sarfaraz Khan, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Ishan Kishan, Abhishek Sharma, Akash Deep, Varun Chakaravarthy, Harshit Rana.
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Indigo flights chaos: SCR to run special trains to clear passenger rush
Hyderabad (PTI): The South Central Railway on Saturday announced that it would run four special trains to manage the surge in passengers resulting from the large-scale cancellation of IndiGo flights here.
The move comes as flyers face significant disruption and long queues at the airport due to the cancellation.
A press release from the SCR said it is running the special trains to clear the extra rush of passengers to Chennai, Mumbai and Shalimar (Kolkata) from Hyderabad today.
Meanwhile, as many as 43 outbound Indigo flights were cancelled from here on Saturday, Rajiv Gandhi International Airport sources said.
ALSO READ: IndiGo cancels over 200 flights from Delhi, Mumbai on Saturday
Similarly, 26 incoming flights are also likely to be cancelled during the day, they said.
The flight cancellations drew ire from passengers, who thronged the IndiGo counters at the airport demanding to know the exact situation.
“This is utter nonsense! Digiyatra done, message received that departure has been rescheduled ahead of the scheduled departure and now upon arriving at Hyderabad airport coming to know at the security checkpoint that Indigo flight is cancelled,” Tarun Singha, former Ministry of Defence spokesperson said in a post on X.
“But the thing is if you don’t shout they do nothing. Example at Hyderabad Airport, there was no staff no flight information for an hour. Then a fellow passenger started shouting on mic and an Indigo staff appeared finally,” a netizen said in a post.
On Friday, when IndiGo cancelled over 1,000 flights from across airports, its CEO Pieter Elbers apologised in a video message for the major inconvenience caused to passengers due to the disruptions.
In the one-way video communication, Elbers also said that the airline was expecting fewer than 1,000 flights on Saturday.
