The illusion of a level playing field

Remember the October 2022 announcement that men and women cricketers would receive equal match fees? When BCCI secretary Jay Shah had tweeted “Pay equity was my commitment to our women cricketers and I thank the Apex Council for their support. Jai Hind.” At the time match fees were ₹15 lakh per Test, ₹6 lakh per ODI and ₹3 lakh per T20I.

Between October 2022 and now, commitment to women cricketers has got a bit fuzzy. We are not talking about how between then and now, the women have played 3 Tests, 21 ODIs, 47 T20Is to the men’s 26 Tests, 52 ODIs and 61 T20Is. From October 2022, among the frontline cricketing nations, in fact the Indian women have played most T20Is earning those equal match fees. Ignore also the 14 T20Is gap (i.e. ₹42 lakhs per player in match fees) between the Indian men and women. It’s possible there was no space on the calendar or even willing opposition available for more T20I matches versus the Indian women.

Things get blurry though around the latest announcement of the women’s retainerships. Along with the fact that the BCCI’s has gotten somewhat shy on the retainership numbers recently. When the 2023-2024 men’s retainerships were announced, cricketers were called ‘athletes’ and the exact amounts of their graded contracts were not mentioned. The last time we saw the men’s numbers was March 2023, whose contract values were ₹7 crore for grade A+, ₹5 crore for A, ₹3 crore for B and ₹1 crore for C.

Only a month after the above numbers were made public the women’s 2022-23 retainerships were announced with the season almost over in April 2023. For the first time - no numbers, maybe because they compared so poorly with the men? It has taken almost 24 months for the next bunch of the women’s retainerships to be announced, their season over and no numbers again. The last public sighting of women’s retainership numbers came in May 2021: ₹50 lakh for grade A, ₹30 lakh for B and ₹10 lakh for C.

But 18 months from then, we were expected to jump up and down over pay equity and six months after that, be grateful for the first WPL. Among current women’s Grade C/ ₹10 lakhs per year players are Yastika Bhatia, Radha Yadav, Shreyanka Patil, Pooja Vastrakar, Sneh Rana. Their ₹83,333 per month is less than the daily allowance of the BCCI’s office-bearers on overseas trips: $1000 or ₹85,470 per day.

This should prove that India’s elite women’s cricketers are treated, in a best case scenario, on par with domestic men’s cricketers. Worst case, the fact that country’s best women are in fact placed a rung lower than the domestic men. In every sense. The WPL may be the world’s highest-paying women’s franchise league, but its eight-strong Executive Council has seven ‘Mr’s and a single ‘Mrs’: Madhumati Lele, president of the Cricket Club of India.

On the BCCI website’s women’s tab, there’s news about women’s retainerships minus their embarrassing figures, plus February celebrations for the India’s second consecutive ICC Women’s under-19 T20 World Cup title. On the women’s fixtures, the Indian women’s tour to England is noted but not a squeak about the ICC Women’s 50-over World Cup scheduled to take place in India later this year. Or its schedule.

But should that surprise? After all, in 2023 the BCCI hosted the worst-organised 50-over ICC World Cup ever. Whose schedule was revealed less than four months before opening night, its tickets up for sale just over six weeks from Game One. It had no CEO or organising committee but two sub-committees [14] announced in July for an event starting October.

Why then should the ICC 2025 Women’s World Cup India be rewarded with the largesse of professional, smooth organisation? Or a CEO? Or a logo? (The ICC CWC2023 logo was released in April[15] so any day now?). All we’ve heard of so far are only rumours of possible ‘tentative’ venues which have to be decided by the hosts that is BCCI i.e. its apex committee. The Sportstar that first reported Visakhapatnam, Thiruvananthapuram, Mullanpur, Guwahati and Indore as ‘tentative’ venues. A few days later ESPNcricinfo replaced Guwahati with Raipur and said that Mullanpur will host the final. Of all the cricket grounds in all the country etc etc. A set of dates was also found in the ESPNcricinfo report: September 26 to November 2.

Just to be clear, the hosts i.e. BCCI pick the venues and the ICC approves of them and releases the schedule. Given that Jay Shah, former BCCI secretary now ICC chairman, has often been called a champion of women’s cricket, we can hope he will throw a fit. Over some of these venues, if not the Mullanpur final itself and demand that at least knockout rounds be held at heritage, women-cricket-friendly grounds like Chinnaswamy or DY Patil.

The story goes that it’s the unseasonal rains due to climate change that have led to the BCCI picking these venues. (Because the men’s Asia Cup should be done by then.) There’s no schedule so far because there’s a qualifier to be held in Lahore from April 9 onwards and should the Pakistan women qualify, it will mean identifying a hybrid venue. Because of course, the Board that draws up schedules for more than 2000 matches a season can’t get their heads around a programme that needed to include the words “vs Qualifier” and “to be confirmed.” Sure. What the hell do we women know.