Sindhu advances to Macau Open final

New Delhi, Jan 16: Veteran cricketer Mithali Raj was on Thursday demoted to Grade B from A in the BCCI central contracts while Radha Yadav and Taniya Bhatia were elevated to the middle bracket.

Mithali not being kept in the Rs 50 lakh category was expected as the 37-year-old retired from T20s in September last year. However, she remains the ODI captain and plans to carry on till the 2021 World Cup.

T20 skipper Harmanpreet Kaur retained his A category contract alongside Smriti Mandhana and Poonam Yadav.

Radha and Taniya, who both had a Grade C contract worth Rs 10 lakh last year, have now entered Grade B (Rs 30 lakh).

Players getting a central contract for the first time are 15-year-old opener Shafali Verma and Harleen Deol, who like the teenager is an attacking batter.

Shafali has attracted a lot of attention ever since making her India debut last year. She recently made 124 against Australia A in Brisbane. The opener will be expected to deliver in the upcoming T20 World Cup Down Under.

Dropped from the list is Mona Meshram, who was in Grade C last year and hasn't played a single game in recent times.

The latest contracts run from October 2019 to September 2020.

Grade A (Rs 50 lakh): Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandhana, Poonam Yadav.

Grade B (Rs 30 lakh): Mithali Raj, Jhulan Goswami, Ekta Bisht, Radha Yadav, Taniya Bhatia, Shikha Pandey, Jemimah Rodrigues, Deepti Sharma.

Grade C (Rs 10 lakh): Veda Krishnamurthy, Punam Raut, Anuja Patil, Mansi Joshi, D Hemlatha, Arundhati Reddy, Rajeshwari Gayakwad, Pooja Vastrakar, Harleen Deol, Priya Punia, Shafali Verma.

Mumbai, Mar 8: Shikhar Dhawan, Hardik Pandya and Bhuvneshwar Kumar returned to India's ODI squad as the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced the team for the upcoming South Africa series.

South Africa are scheduled to tour India for a three-match ODI series, starting from March 12.

India's ODI squad: Shikhar Dhawan, Prithvi Shaw, Virat Kohli (C ), KL Rahul, Manish Pandey, Shreyas Iyer, Rishabh Pant, Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Yuzvendra Chahal, Jasprit Bumrah, Navdeep Saini, Kuldeep Yadav, Shubman Gill.

Cricket South Africa (CSA) have already announced their squad for the series and spinner George Linde was given maiden ODI call-up.

South Africa squad: Quinton de Kock (c, wk), Temba Bavuma, Rassie van der Dussen, Faf du Plessis, Kyle Verreynne, Heinrich Klaasen, David Miller, Jon-Jon Smuts, Andile Phehlukwayo, Lungi Ngidi, Lutho Sipamla, Beuran Hendricks, Anrich Nortje, George Linde, Keshav Maharaj, Janneman Malan.

The first ODI will be played in Dharamsala while the other two matches will be played in Lucknow and Kolkata on March 15 and 18, respectively.

London, Apr 12: Former Formula 1 legendary driver Stirling Moss died at the age of 90 on Sunday.

"All at F1 send our heartfelt condolences to Lady Susie and Sir Stirling's family and friends," Formula 1 said in a statement.

Often referred to as the greatest driver never to win the world championship, Moss contested 66 Grands Prix from 1951 to 1961, driving for the likes of Vanwall, Maserati and Mercedes, where he famously formed a contented and ruthlessly effective partnership with lead driver Juan Manuel Fangio.

In his 10-year-long stint at the tracks, Moss took 16 wins, some of which rank among the truly iconic drives in the sport's history - his 1961 victories in Monaco and Germany in particular often held up as all-time classics.

Moss won the 1955 Mille Miglia on public roads for Mercedes at an average speed of close to 100mph, while he also competed in rallies and land-speed attempts.

Following an enforced retirement from racing (barring a brief comeback in saloon cars in the 1980s) after a major crash at Goodwood in 1962, Moss maintained a presence in Formula 1 as both a sports correspondent and an interested observer, before retiring from public life in January of 2018.