Batting stars Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, who have retired from test and T20 international cricket, had their India central contracts downgraded on Monday.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced it had scrapped the elite A+ contract category, making A the top tier.
Test and ODI captain Shubman Gill, pace bowler Jasprit Bumrah and allrounder Ravindra Jadeja were awarded A category contracts.
The BCCI did not stipulate pay for each category, but the top contracts carried an annual salary of $772 000 last year.
A total of 30 senior men's cricketers, none of them new faces, were awarded central contracts spread across three tiers.
Grade A: Shubman Gill, Jasprit Bumrah, Ravindra Jadeja.
Grade B: Washington Sundar, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Mohammed Siraj, Hardik Pandya, Rishabh Pant, Kuldeep Yadav, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Suryakumar Yadav, Shreyas Iyer.
Grade C: Axar Patel, Tilak Varma, Rinku Singh, Shivam Dube, Sanju Samson, Arshdeep Singh, Prasidh Krishna, Akash Deep, Dhruv Jurel, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakaravarthy, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Abhishek Sharma, Sai Sudharsan, Ravi Bishnoi, Ruturaj Gaikwad.