The Board of Control for Cricket in India on Thursday announced the annual contracts for cricket players, and like every time, there were certain players who, much to the surprise of the fans were left out of the list. And, one of the most surprising expulsions was that of the young pacer T Natarajan.
Natarajan, after his rise in tennis ball cricket, which brought him into franchise competitions, through which he made into the Indian team, has played in 7 International matches so far and has performed decently. He has so far taken as many as 13 wickets and has come to the Indian team’s rescue whenever it was needed for them. All of this has made him a name present in team India’s plans going forward in International, so the fans were taken aback when he was left out of the list of the centrally contracted players.
T Natarajan can still be included in the list of contracted players
But, there is a reason because of which he missed out on earning his spot in the contracted players’ list this time around. It is that Natarajan does not fulfil the criteria for getting a central contract at the moment. For getting a BCCI Central Contract, a player has to play a minimum of three Tests or eight ODIs or 10 T20Is in a season. Natarajan at the moment, as it was stated earlier has played in only 7 matches so far, which makes him fall short of fulfilling the criterion for being included in this elite list of players.
He has not missed the bus though, because if Nataraj, before September 2021 is able to feature in 2 more Test matches for India, which is possible on the tour to England or make it into the playing XI of 6 ODIs or T20Is, he would very well be included into the list.
Apart from Natarajan, there are a handful of other players who did not get the contact, having not been able to fulfil the criteria for their inclusion in the contracted players’ list. Krunal Pandya, Suryakumar Yadav, and Prithvi Shaw are some names who would have definitely gotten a contract had they fulfilled the criteria at the time of announcement. They too, like Natarajan, can still make it into the list before playing the stipulated number of games before September 2021, and get included in the list. These players though, would not be paid their full contract amounts, if they get one, and instead, they would be paid on a pro-rata basis.
