BCCI dropped Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer from central contract

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has dropped wicketkeepers Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer from its central contract for year 2023-24, while Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane have also been left out of the contract.

Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer both have recently distanced themselves from playing domestic cricket.

Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja are in the Grade A Plus category while Ravi Chandran Ashwin, Muhammad Shami, Muhammad Siraj, KL Rahul, Shubman Gill and Hardik Pandya are in the Grade A category. Surya Kumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant, Kuldeep Yadav, Akshar Patel and Yashwi Jaiswal are in the Grade B.

15 players have been included in Grade C including Rinku Singh, Tilak Verma, Rituraj Gaikwad, Shardal Thakur, Shivam Dubey, Ravi Bishnoi, Jitesh Sharma, Washington Sundar, Mukesh Kumar, Sanju Samson, Arshad Singh, KS Bharat, Prasad. Krishna, Aveesh Khan and Rajat Patidar are included.

Ishan Kishan left the South Africa tour last year and returned home. Since then he has been absent from competitive cricket. He was not selected in the squad for the home T20 series against Afghanistan and the Test series against England. Team India head coach Rahul Dravid said that Ishan will have to play domestic cricket to return to Team India, but he stayed away from the Ranji Trophy.