Team India’s dashing opener Shikhar Dhawan has been in form of his life since Champions trophy in June last year. He was the Man of the Tournament in the Champions Trophy, followed it with a great Test season and was right behind Virat Kohli in the leading-scorers list in South Africa. And the efforts seem to be paying off, literally.
Dhawan will now be earning more in a month than what he was in a year. BCCI has rewarded Dhawan by promoting him from Grade C to A+ in its new annual contract, taking his salary from Rs 50 lakh per annum to a whopping Rs 7 crore. This means that Dhawan will be earning Rs 58 lakh per month which is even more than what he was earning in a year.
The pay hike corresponds to a staggering 1300% increase which is even more than what senior players like Virat Kohli and Mahendra Singh Dhoni got. Both these cricketers were earlier placed in Grade A with a salary of Rs 2 crore. While Kohli was promoted to the newly formed Grade A+ with an annual salary of Rs 7 crore, Dhoni was kept in Grade A but his earnings were raised to Rs 5 crore.
A BCCI official said that selectors have applied a simple logic that players who play more, will be get paid more. He said that this is why players like MS Dhoni, Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja who represent the country in just one or two formats, have not been placed in the top grade.
Apart from Shikhar Dhawan, the top bracket includes skipper Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah. “The five in question are indispensable in all three formats right now. They deserved to be paid more. Also Ravi Shastri, Kohli and Dhoni have been taken into confidence,” the official added.
