Nehra lands central contract

Ashish Nehra's return to India's one-day side has earned him a central contract

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Left-seamer Ashish Nehra has been awarded a central contract by the Board of Control for Cricket in India, but fellow left-arm seamer Irfan Pathan has been dropped from the list of contracted players.

Nehra, who returned to India’s one-day team for the first time since September 2005 for the series in West Indies earlier this year, has been handed a Grade B contract which carries a retainer fee of four million Indian rupees (about £52,000).

Right-arm seamer Praveen Kumar has been moved up from Grade C (2.5 million rupees, about £32,000) to Grade B, while Irfan, who has fallen out of favour with national selectors, has been dropped entirely from the list.

There has been no change to the nine players in the top grade (6 million rupees, about £77,700 pounds), which includes captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman.

Mumbai’s Dhawal Kulkarni, Ajinkya Rahane and Abhishek Nayar have been awarded Grade D (1.5 million rupees, £19,400) contracts along with Manoj Tiwary.

Grade A: Sachin Tendulkar, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, Yuvraj Singh, Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh.
Grade B: Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma, Munaf Patel, RP Singh, Ishant Sharma, Praveen Kumar, Ashish Nehra.
Grade C: S Badrinath, Wasim Jaffer, Yusuf Pathan, Pragyan Ojha, Sreesanth, Dinesh Karthik, Amit Mishra.
Grade D: Piyush Chawla, Ravindra Jadeja, Robin Uthappa, Parthiv Patel, Cheteshwar Pujara, Mohammad Kaif, Virat Kohli, Ashok Dinda, Wriddhiman Saha, M Vijay, R Ashwin, Shikhar Dhawan, Sudeep Tyagi, Dhawal Kulkarni, Abhishek Nayar, Ajinkya Rahane, Manoj Tiwary.