MS Dhoni dropped from BCCI annual contract - a hint to his exit from international cricket?

New Delhi : One of the most decorated captains of Team India, Mahendra Singh Dhoni has not been awarded the annual BCCI contract, rising speculations on the concern that it may be a signal to his exit from the cricket.

While announcing the fresh annual contracts for the senior players of Team India, BCCI dropped four big names – MS Dhoni, Dinesh Karthik, Khaleel Ahmed and recently-retired Ambati Rayudu. The BCCI announced the central contracts for the period of October 2019 to September 2020.

The A category players in the team are given Rs 5 crores a year. The contracts, from October 2019 to September 2020, are in four categories - A+ (Rs 7 crore), A (Rs 5 crore), B (Rs 3 crore) and C (Rs 1 crore).

A total of 27 players have been named and categorized in the above four segments; skipper Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah were placed in the A+ category.

According to a BCCI release, following are the players in the 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.