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Former India skipper MS Dhoni hasn’t played a single competitive cricket match after that heart-breaking run out in WC 2019 semi-final against New Zealand. The veteran keeper-batsman has made himself unavailable for selection for all the series till now and there’s no official announcement on his return.
Since the WC 2019 exit, there have been many instances that have indicated towards the end of MS Dhoni’s international carrer. Recently, Ravi Shastri said that the wicketkeeper-batsman may soon end his ODI carrer and will have to perform well in the IPL 2020 to be in contention for a spot in the upcoming T20 World Cup.
The latest move from BCCI has once again stirred the speculation of end of the legend’s era. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) released the new player contracts for India senior men players on Thursday in four categories. The former India skipper MS Dhoni was left out from the BCCI’s list of centrally contracted players.
Earlier, MS Dhoni was in the A category, which fetches a player Rs 5 crore, until last year. Considering he hasn’t played a single competitive game since July 09, 2019 (WC Semi-final) brings no surprise to his emission from the contract but it came as a huge blow to MSDians on Twitter. Soon after the BCCI release #ThankYou DHoni and #MSDhoni took over the twitter.
Apart from MS Dhoni, Khaleel Ahmed, Dinesh Karthik and Ambati Rayudu have been dropped from the central contract. As per a BCCI release, below mentioned are the four categories for the players:
Category A+ (7 crores): Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah
Category A (5 crores): Ravichandran Ashwin, Shikhar Dhawan, Mohammad Shami, Ishant Sharma, Kuldeep Yadav, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, KL Rahul and Rishabh Pant.
Category B (3 crores): Umesh Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Hardik Pandya, Wriddhiman Saha, Mayank Agarwal.
Category C (1 crore): Kedar Jadhav, Deepak Chahar, Manish Pandey, Hanuma Vihari, Navdeep Saini, Shardul Thakur, Shreyas Iyer, Washington Sundar.