India’s most successful woman cricketer and senior most member of the senior national team Mithali Raj has been denied the Elite Grade A contract.
Mithali will be contracted in Grade B as per the new annual retainership announced for the senior national women’s team.
Only Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandhana and Poonam Yadav figure in the top Grade A bracket, which offers an annual contract of ₹ 50 lakh. The 10 players in Grade B will be entitled for a contract fee of ₹ 30 lakh while the six in the lowest Grade C will get ₹ 10 lakh per annum.
The BCCI on Wednesday has announced the Annual Player Contracts for Team India (Senior Women) for the period from October 2020 to September 2021.
The payment structures are as under for Team India (Senior Women):
| Period | Grade A | Grade B | Grade C |
| Oct 2020 to Sept 2021 | ₹ 50 lakh | ₹ 30 lakh | ₹ 10 lakh |
Distribution of Annual Player Contracts Team India (Senior Women):
| Grade I | No. | Athletes |
| A | 1 | Harmanpreet Kaur |
| 2 | Smriti Mandhana | |
| 3 | Poonam Yadav |
| Grade II | No. | Athletes |
| B | 1 | Mithali Raj |
| 2 | Jhulan Goswami | |
| 3 | Deepti Sharma | |
| 4 | Punam Raut | |
| 5 | Rajeshwari Gayakwad | |
| 6 | Shafali Verma | |
| 7 | Radha Yadav | |
| 8 | Shikha Pandey | |
| 9 | Taniya Bhatia | |
| 10 | Jemimah Rodrigues |
| Grade III | No. | Athletes |
| C | 1 | Mansi Joshi |
| 2 | Arundhati Reddy | |
| 3 | Pooja Vastrakar | |
| 4 | Harleen Deol | |
| 5 | Priya Punia | |
| 6 | Richa Ghosh |
The Indian women team’s next major assignment will be a tour of England, starting next month.
