Did BCCI get rid of fast-bowling contracts? Akash Deep will get a promotion, others overlooked

During the last cycle of the BCCI central contracts, the board had introduced something called the ‘fast bowling contracts’, which were offered to upcoming pacers — Umran Malik, Vijaykumar Vyshak, Yash Dayal, Vidwath Kavderappa, and Akash Deep. But when the new contracts for 2024-25 were announced on Monday, there was no mention of these ‘fast bowling contract’.

It clearly means that the BCCI has done away with them. While pacer Akash Deep, who was a member of the Indian Test team for the Australia tour, was promoted to Grade C, the others were just overlooked for the contract. Although, it isn’t mentioned clearly in the BCCI release, but then that is the only conclusion one can draw, given Akash Deep was promoted to grade C.

Some of the new entrants in grade C were – Nitish Kumar Reddy, who went on to score a maiden ton in Australia, Dhruv Jurel, Sarfaraz Khan, Ishan Kishan and Varun Chakravarthy. But the biggest surprise of them all was Rishabh Pant being handed out a Grade A contract, while Axar Patel was kept in Grade B.

Grade A+: Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja.

Grade A: Rishabh Pant, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj, KL Rahul, Shubman Gill and Hardik Pandya.

Grade B: Suryakumar Yadav, Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, Shreyas Iyer and Yashasvi Jaiswal.

Grade C: Rinku Singh, Tilak Verma, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Shivam Dube, Ravi Bishnoi, Washington Sundar, Mukesh Kumar, Sanju Samson, Arshdeep Singh, Prasidh Krishna, Rajat Patidar, Dhruv Jurel, Sarafraz Khan, Nitish Reddy, Ishan Kishan, Abhishek Sharma, Akash Deep, Varun Chakaravarthy and Harshit Rana.