England keep their No 1 Slot

England beat India by six wickets in the lone T20, thus keeping their numero uno position in World T20 Cricket.

India could only score 120-9 and England surpassed that humble target with 8 balls to spare. KP scored 53 off 39 balls to spearhead the English win. England get a lot of relief, as this win save their faces, as they lost horribly to India in the ODIs. KP was dropped at one by Raina and he hit three sixes and five fours, as the reigning T20 champions proved their supremacy in the shortest version of the game. Samit Patel hit 21 off 25 balls and Bopara remained not out on 14. England bowled clinically and restricted India to 120. Raina top scored with 39 and only he could shine with the bat. The rest Indian batsmen fell like nine pins.

Meanwhile, BCCI awarded 36 contracts to players, an addition of 11 more players in Grade C. Kohli, Yuvi and Ishant were promoted to Grade A. Now Grade A has 12 players, instead of the previous nine.

They are

Grade A ( Rs 1 Crore)

Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Yuvraj Singh, Ishant Sharma, Virat Kohli.Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag, M S Dhoni, VVS Laxman & Suresh Raina.

Grade B ( Rs 50 lakhs)

Rohit Sharma, Ravindra Jadeja.,Praveen Kumar, Pragyan Ojha & Ravichandran Ashwin.

Grade C ( Rs 25 lakhs )

S Sreesanth, Amit Mishra, Cheteshwar Pujara, Abhimanyu Mithun, Vinay Kumar, Ajinkya Rahane, Munaf Patel, Murali Vijay, Shikhar Dhawan, Wriddhiman Saha, Parthiv Patel, S Badrinath, Manoj Tiwary, Piyush Chawla, Dinesh Karthik, Jaydev Unadkat, Umesh Yadav, Rahul Sharma & Varun Aaron.

Kohli got the nod because of his impressive show in the series against England, even though he flopped in the West Indies. Ishant for his good show in England. Murali Vijay was pushed to Group C and Ashish Nehra was not included in the list.