Cricket Australia has named its list of 25 players who have been provided with the Australian cricket contracts for the next season.

It is evident that the Australian cricket board is looking into the future with the likes of Ryan Harris and Clint McKay along with Steve Smith and Tim Paine been awarded the contracts.

How it works is that the Australian selectors rank the players in both the formats of the games and the combined rankings are used to arrive at the final rank of every player. There are five players who earn a fixed contract of an average of $1.5m over the next year, including all game fees. The rest of them get paid a minimum of $200,000, which gets added incrementally based on their performances.

The list excludes two of the senior cricketers, Nathan Bracken and Stuart Clark, both of whom, have been out of cricket for some time now.

Andrew McDonald, James Hopes and Callum Fergusson continue to hold on to their contracts, whilst it is reported that the likes of Watson, Ponting and Clarke would each get a retainer of a million and a half.

Australia will next play in a few Test matches against Pakistan, which will be followed by the year-end bonanza of the Ashes. England are the current holders of the urn having beaten the Aussies 2-1 in the previous edition, but Australia go in as favourites to regain the Ashes; 4/7 at Blue Square. Totesport offers 11/8 for England to retain the urn, whereas Bwin offers 3/5 for Australia to win the series and 15/4 for England to do so.