Central Contracts

The BCCI have just announced their central contracts for the coming 12 months and it seems that everyone is well aware what each player is paid. Grade A get 5 million rupees (£62,317), Grade B 3.5m and Grade C 2m.

Grade A: Rahul Dravid (captain), Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Anil Kumble, Yuvraj Singh, Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

Grade B: VVS Laxman, Harbhajan Singh, Virender Sehwag, Irfan Pathan, Ajit Agarkar.

Grade C: Gautam Gambhir, Wasim Jaffer, S Sreesanth, Zaheer Khan, Suresh Raina, Munaf Patel.

Irrespective of the arguments over who should be in which grade, the system of tiering pay seems inherently wrong to me. England do it as well, although at least who is in which grade and how much they are paid is not publised publicly. What is the reason for tiered payment systems?

A payment system that gives the same base salaries across all contracted players, but varies based on number of games played/unfit for would seem to be as complicated and as simple as it needs to get. (That way you don't get divisions in the dressing room. The senior players can make more money than the more junior ones through sponsorship and endorsements etc, so if the only way they feel good about themselves is by earning more money than their peers, they can do so.

New Zealand have found that they have a problem with Hamish Marshall as he was only offered the lowest band of money, so has turned down a central contract in order to play for Gloucestershire. This could be a trend that increases if the tiered payment system continues, but having set up their payment systems as they have it takes an extremely strong administration to change things, and strong administration is not something in abundance around the world of cricket.