The illusion of a level playing field in cricket

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.

- Sharda Ugra

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 lakh 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.