BCCI Central Contracts Explained: Grades, Retainers
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Cricket in India8 min read
A centrally contracted India player is paid three separate ways, and the retainer that gets the headlines is often the smallest of the three. There is an annual retainer set by grade; a match fee for every international appearance, currently 15 lakh rupees for a Test, 6 lakh for a one-day international and 3 lakh for a Twenty20 international; and, since the 2022-23 season, a Test incentive that can pay 45 lakh per match on top of the fee.
The arithmetic on that last one is worth doing. A player who appears in seven or more Tests in a nine-match season earns 15 lakh in match fee and 45 lakh in incentive per game — 60 lakh a Test. Across seven Tests that is 4.2 crore, which is more than the annual retainer for any grade below the top one. The board built the scheme deliberately to make red-ball cricket the most lucrative format for a contracted player, in a market where the Indian Premier League pays more for six weeks than international cricket does for a year.
The other structural fact is that match fees are now identical for men and women. The BCCI equalised them in October 2022, making India one of the first boards anywhere to do so for international appearances.
The grade system
Central contracts are annual, awarded by the board's selection process, and sorted into grades that carry a fixed retainer regardless of how much a player actually plays.
| Grade | Annual retainer | Who it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Grade A | 5 crore | The small group of first-choice players across formats |
| Grade B | 3 crore | Established internationals, usually multi-format |
| Grade C | 1 crore | Squad players and those establishing themselves |
For the 2025-26 list the board operated these three grades having phased out the earlier Grade A+, which had carried a 7 crore retainer and been reserved for a handful of players. Under the revised structure Grade A held only three names — Shubman Gill, Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja — while Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, both previously in A+, were placed in Grade B.
That reshuffle is a useful illustration of what the grades actually measure. They are not a ranking of career standing; they are a judgement about expected involvement across formats in the season ahead. A player who has retired from two of the three formats will drop grades even if they remain among the best in the world in the third.
The bodies that make these decisions are described on the India selection committee explained page.
Match fees
The retainer is paid whether or not a player is picked. Match fees are paid per appearance and are the same for every contracted player regardless of grade.
| Format | Match fee |
|---|---|
| Test | 15 lakh |
| ODI | 6 lakh |
| T20I | 3 lakh |
These figures have applied since the equalisation announced in October 2022, when the board set women's international match fees at the same level as the men's. Before that the women's fees were substantially lower, and the change was announced as a matter of policy rather than negotiated concession.
The gap between the Test fee and the Twenty20 fee is five to one. That ratio, on its own, already tips the incentive towards red-ball cricket — a player choosing between formats is paid five times as much per match for the longer one, before the incentive scheme is applied at all.
The Test Cricket Incentive Scheme
Introduced from the 2022-23 season, this is the mechanism that changes the economics most.
| Tests played in a season | Playing XI incentive per match | Non-playing squad member |
|---|---|---|
| More than 75% of scheduled Tests | 45 lakh | 22.5 lakh |
| More than 50% of scheduled Tests | 30 lakh | 15 lakh |
| 50% or fewer | None | None |
The percentages are calculated against the number of Tests scheduled in that season. On a nine-Test season, the higher tier requires seven appearances and the lower tier five or six.
Two features of the design are worth noting. The scheme pays squad members who do not play — at half the playing rate — which is a deliberate attempt to make carrying drinks for a red-ball tour financially reasonable rather than a sacrifice. And it is structured as a cliff rather than a slope: a player who appears in six Tests of nine earns 30 lakh a match, and one who appears in seven earns 45 lakh a match, so the seventh appearance is worth 45 lakh plus a 15 lakh uplift on each of the previous six.
The board's stated purpose was to encourage players to prioritise Test cricket. Whether it has worked is a separate question, and one the schedule makes hard to answer, but the intent is explicit in the announcement.
The format itself is covered on the Test cricket in India page.
What a contract is actually worth
Take a Grade B player who plays a full season across formats. The retainer is 3 crore. Seven Tests at 15 lakh is 1.05 crore in fees, plus 45 lakh a match in incentive for another 3.15 crore. Twelve one-day internationals at 6 lakh adds 72 lakh, and ten Twenty20 internationals at 3 lakh adds 30 lakh.
That comes to roughly 8.2 crore from board contracts alone, of which the retainer is a little over a third. A Grade C player on the same playing schedule would earn around 6.2 crore, because only the retainer differs.
This is the point most commentary on central contracts misses. The grade determines a floor, not a total, and the difference between grades — 2 crore between A and B, 2 crore between B and C — is smaller than the difference between playing a full red-ball season and not playing one.
Set against the Indian Premier League, the numbers look different again. A leading player's IPL salary alone can exceed the entire package above, for a tournament lasting about two months. How that market operates is set out on the IPL auction explained page and at the Indian Premier League hub.
The domestic tier below
Central contracts cover a small group — typically around thirty men's players. Everyone else in the first-class system is paid through match fees for domestic cricket, which the board has raised substantially in recent years, and through their state association.
A player on the domestic circuit who does not hold a central contract earns from Ranji Trophy, Vijay Hazare Trophy and Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy appearances, from the Indian Premier League if contracted, and from the board's separate pool for uncapped players. That structure is described on the Ranji Trophy guide page and the Indian domestic cricket calendar page.
The gap between a contracted international and a domestic professional remains very large, which is why the pathway pages matter — the India A cricket pathway page covers the step between the two.
Equal pay, and what it did and did not equalise
The October 2022 decision equalised match fees. It did not equalise retainers, and the women's grade structure carries lower retainer values than the men's.
That distinction is frequently blurred in reporting. A woman playing a Test now receives the same 15 lakh as a man playing a Test. A woman on the top women's grade does not receive the same annual retainer as a man on Grade A.
The other qualification is volume. India's women play far fewer international matches than the men — and, in Test cricket, only a handful in any given cycle — so equal per-match fees produce unequal annual earnings simply through fixture count. The Women's Premier League, launched in 2023, has done more to change women's cricket earnings in India than the fee equalisation did, and is covered on the Women's Premier League guide page. The women's game more broadly is on the India women's cricket history page and the India women's domestic cricket page.
Three things the structure tells you
The board has decided, through money, that Test cricket is the priority. Nothing in the contract system is neutral between formats: the Test fee is five times the Twenty20 fee, and only Test cricket carries an incentive scheme.
Grades matter less than they appear. The retainer spread between the top and bottom grade is 4 crore, and a busy red-ball season is worth more than that in incentive alone.
And the contract system is not the main source of income for the players at the top of it. For a player with a substantial Indian Premier League contract and endorsements, the board retainer is a component rather than the foundation — which changes the leverage in a way boards elsewhere do not have to manage. The governance context for all of this is on the BCCI structure explained page, and the rest of the Indian game at the cricket in India hub.
Sources and method
The grade structure and retainer values for the 2025-26 contract list, including the removal of the Grade A+ tier and the placement of individual players, come from the BCCI's published contract announcement and the reporting of it, read on 30 August 2026.
Match fee figures of 15 lakh for a Test, 6 lakh for a one-day international and 3 lakh for a Twenty20 international are those announced by the board in October 2022 when men's and women's international match fees were equalised, and confirmed against the International Cricket Council's report of that announcement.
The Test Cricket Incentive Scheme tiers — 45 lakh per match above 75 per cent participation and 30 lakh above 50 per cent, with half those amounts for non-playing squad members, effective from 2022-23 — are as published by the BCCI in its own announcement of the scheme.
The worked example of a season's earnings is arithmetic applied to those published figures for an illustrative fixture list. It is a calculation, not a report of what any individual was paid, and actual earnings depend on the season's schedule and on selection.
Retainer and fee values are revised by the board from time to time and are not indexed. The figures here are those in force for the contract cycle described, and readers checking a later season should expect them to have moved. Player-by-player grade placements change annually and are not reproduced in full on this page.