India and Pakistan are the two most popular cricket playing nations which produced a plethora of stars in their rich cricketing heritage.
The respective boards, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), look after the monetary issues of its players.
Since the era of globalisation, BCCI has gone several notches higher to become the richest and the most powerful board in the world.
BCCI’s golden hen, the Indian Premier League (IPL), has made it one of the most influential private institutions in the world.
Therefore, it is only obvious that it takes good care of its international cricketers financially. Today, let us look at the salaries of the centrally contracted players of the two boards.
The PCB distributes remuneration to the international players through three categories, while the BCCI offers four lucrative categories based on several criteria.
Categories of Centrally contracted players in PCB
The A Category players receive a monthly salary of 1.1 Million PKR (USD 6,798), which roughly makes it an annual income of 13.2 Million PKR (USD 81,576) for its players.
In the B Category, centrally contracted cricketers earn about 750,000 PKR (USD 4,635) monthly, i.e., 9 Million PKR (USD 55,627) annually.
The C Category cricketers earn up to 550,000 PKR (USD 3,400) monthly, which turns out to be 6.6 Million PKR (USD 40,793) annually.
Categories of Centrally contracted players in PCB
For the Indian cricketer, cricketers under Grade C contract earn up to INR 1 crore (USD 132,476) annually while Grade B players earn INR 3 crore (USD 397,430) per year.
However, the most financially lucrative contracts are bagged by Grade A+ and A cricketers, who get paid a whopping annual amount of INR 7 crore (USD 927,336) and INR 5 crore (USD 662,383), respectively.
Different categories of the two boards and their annual retainerships (A.R.):
PCB (for 2020-2021)
Grade A: Babar Azam, Azhar Ali, Shaheen Shah Afridi (A.R: 81,576)
Grade B: Asad Shafiq, Haris Sohail, Mohammad Abbas, Shadab Khan, Abid Ali, Mohammad Rizwan, Sarfaraz Ahmed, Shan Masood, Yasir Shah (A.R: 55,627)
Grade C: Fakhar Zaman, Imad Wasim, Imam-ul-Haq, Naseem Shah, Iftikhar Ahmed, Usman Shinwari (A.R: 40,793)
BCCI (for 2019-2021)
Grade A+: Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah (A.R: 927,336)
Grade A: Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, KL Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, Mohammad Shami, Ishant Sharma, Kuldeep Yadav, Rishabh Pant (A.R: 662,383)
Grade B: Wriddhiman Saha, Umesh Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Hardik Pandya, Mayank Agarwal (A.R: 397,430)
Grade C: Kedar Jadhav, Navdeep Saini, Deepak Chahar, Manish Pandey, Hanuma Vihari, Shardul Thakur, Shreyas Iyer, Washington Sundar (A.R: 132,476)
