NEW DELHI: The Indian cricket board signalled it is ready for life without Mahendra Singh Dhoni after dropping the long-serving wicket-keeper from its list of centrally-contracted players on Thursday.

The former captain quit Test cricket in 2014 and has not played for India since taking a break after the team’s semi-finals exit at the 50-overs World Cup in England last year.

Coach Ravi Shastri said earlier this month that Dhoni, who will turn 39 in July, could be considered for this year’s Twenty20 World Cup in Australia.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), however, seemed to have made up its mind and Dhoni, who has stonewalled retirement talks in his rare media interactions, was conspicuous by his absence in the 27-player list.

In the new list, captain Virat Kohli, opener Rohit Sharma and pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah have retained their place in the ‘A+’ grade, worth 70 million Indian rupees ($986,923) a year.

The 11 players grouped in the ‘A’ grade with retainers of 50 million rupees include Rishabh Pant, who is seen as Dhoni’s successor in limited-overs cricket.

Test wicket-keeper Wriddhiman Saha was promoted to grade ‘B’ where he joins opener Mayank Agarwal and three others who will earn 30 million rupees each.

The final group comprises eight players with retainers of 10 million rupees for the period from October 2019 to September 2020.

Dhoni, who was in grade ‘A’ in the previous list, remains India’s most successful limited-overs captain who led the team to World Cup victories both in the 20-overs (2007) and 50-overs (2011) formats.

Dinesh Karthik, Khaleel Ahmed and Ambati Rayudu also missed out on a contract.

Grade A+: Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah

Grade A: Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, KL Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma, Kuldeep Yadav, Rishabh Pant

Grade B: Wriddhiman Saha, Umesh Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Hardik Pandya, Mayank Agarwal

Grade C: Kedar Jadhav, Navdeep Saini, Deepak Chahar, Manish Pandey, Hanuma Vihari, Shardul Thakur, Shreyas Iyer, Washington Sundar.

Published in Dawn, January 17th, 2020