Twelve Indian cricketers have signed the contract with the Indian board regarding graded payments. The one-year contract will be effective from October 1, 2004. The contracts have finally been signed, but not before a long-drawn-out process where the players and the board had to iron out several points of disagreement.

The twelve who signed were part of the 17 who were offered contracts a few months back. The remaining five were not at the Test at Kolkata, and therefore would be sent the contracts at the earliest to be signed and returned. As per the contract, players in Grade A would get Rs5million (US$110000 approx) per year, those in Grade B Rs3.5million and in Grade C Rs2million (US$45000 approx).

Besides the annual contractual payment, players will also receive match fees as per usual practice, but it will be paid to only to the playing XI. Those who feature in the squad but do not make the playing XI will receive 50% of the match fees. The match fees at home will be Rs200,000 for a Test and Rs160,000 for an ODI. Abroad, it will be Rs240,000 for a Test and Rs185,000 for an ODI.

The following players signed the contract: Grade A Sourav Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Virender Sehwag, VVS Laxman, Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh.

Grade B Mohammad Kaif, Zaheer Khan, Irfan Pathan and Ashish Nehra.

Grade C Murali Karthik.

The following players are yet to sign: Yuvraj Singh, Ajit Agarkar, Lakshmipathy Balaji, Parthiv Patel and Aakash Chopra.