Dhoni left out of BCCI's Annual Player Contracts 2019-20 | Photo Credit: IANS

Key Highlights No place of MS Dhoni as BCCI announces the list of centrally contracted players for 2019-20 cricket season Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah are the only players in the A+ category Navdeep Saini, Mayank Agarwal, Shreyas Iyer, Washinton Sundar and Deepak Chahar have been included for the first time

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has announced central contracts for the 2019-20 season. While Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah are the only three players in A+ category, there's no place for MS Dhoni in the entire list. The said contract is from the period of October 2019 to September 2020. The question over Dhoni's future in the team has been in debate for quite some time and the decision to exclude him from the annual contracts seems to have hinted towards a possible end of the former skipper in international cricket.

It is the first instance for the likes of Navdeep Saini, Mayank Agarwal, Shreyas Iyer, Washinton Sundar and Deepak Chahar to be included in the list of centrally contracted players.

As per the BCCI structure, the players in the A+ category will earn a sum of Rs 7 crore in the period while those in the A, B and C category will earn Rs 5 cr, Rs 3 cr and Rs 1 cr respectively. Here's how the division has been made:

Grade S.No. Athletes A+ 1 Mr Virat Kohli 2 Mr Rohit Sharma 3 Mr Jasprit Bumrah Grade S.No. Athletes A 1 Mr Ravichandran Ashwin 2 Mr Ravindra Jadeja 3 Mr Bhuvneshwar Kumar 4 Mr Cheteshwar Pujara 5 Mr Ajinkya Rahane 6 Mr K L Rahul 7 Mr Shikhar Dhawan 8 Mr Mohd. Shami 9 Mr Ishant Sharma 10 Mr Kuldeep Yadav 11 Mr Rishabh Pant Grade S.No. Athletes B 1 Mr Wriddhiman Saha 2 Mr Umesh Yadav 3 Mr Yuzvendra Chahal 4 Mr Hardik Pandya 5 Mr Mayank Agarwal Grade S.No. Athletes C 1 Mr Kedar Jadhav 2 Mr Navdeep Saini 3 Mr Deepak Chahar 4 Mr Manish Pandey 5 Mr Hanuma Vihari 6 Mr Shardul Thakur 7 Mr Shreyas Iyer 8 Mr Washington Sundar

Dhoni has maintained distance whenever it came to speaking about his international future and had famously asked journalists to wait till January when he was asked to comment on the subject. While his absence from the central contracts doesn't mean that he can't play for India, the move does assert that the Ranchi-born wicket-keeper batsman isn't in the team management's plans for the major part of the remainder of the cricket season.