India’s Richa Ghosh.
| Photo Credit: Emmanual Yogini
Young wicket-keeper batter Richa Ghosh and Jemimah Rodrigues have been elevated to B category in the BCCI central contracts for the 2022-23 season while the likes of Shikha Pandey and Taniya Bhatia have been dropped.
The contract period runs from October to September but the BCCI made the announcement on April 27.
A player in A category gets paid ₹50 lakh over and above match fees and ₹30 lakh and ₹ 10 lakh are allotted for B and C category respectively.
The board has kept only three players in the highest category and they include skipper Harmanpreet Kaur, star batter Smriti Mandhana and all-rounder Deepti Sharma.
All three have been retained in the same category while spinner Rajeshwari Gayakwad has been demoted to B category. Leg spinner Poonam Yadav, who was in the A category last year, doesn’t have a contract at all after falling down in the pecking order. She last played for India in March 2022.
Veteran pacer Shikha Pandey, who had made a surprise comeback for the T20 World Cup in South Africa, finds herself without a contract and so does wicket-keeper Taniya Bhatia.
Pacer Renuka Thakur, who did not have a contract last year, has been bracketed straight into the B category after a stellar season.
Richa Ghosh and Jemimah Rodrigues have moved up from C to B category. New entrants in Category C include pacer Meghna Singh, batter Devika Vaidya, opener S Meghana, Radha Yadav, left-arm pacer Anjali Sarvani and batter Yastika Bhatia.
Harleen Deol and Sneh Rana remain in the lowest category while injury-prone all-rounder Pooja Vastrakar has been demoted to C from B.
The BCCI, which announced equal pay for women cricketers last year, has kept the number of contracted to 17.
The full list:
Category A: Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandha and Deepti Sharma.
Category B: Renuka Thakur, Jemimah Rodrigues, Shafali Verma, Richa Ghosh, Rajeshwari Gayakwad.
Category C: Meghna Singh, Devika Vaidya, S Meghana, Anjali Sarvani, Pooja Vastrakar, Sneh Rana, Radha Yadav, Harleen Deol and Yastika Bhatia.