In a decision that has come as a pleasant surprise to many, the governing body of Indian Cricket, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) just announced in a tweet by its secretary that cricketers in India will now be paid an equal match fee. For those wondering why this wasn’t already the status quo, blame the inherent gender parity that ails every industry in India.
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It is no secret that gender parity in cricket has always been abysmal. Not surprisingly, India is only the second country in the world after New Zealand to have this rule of an equal match fee for its cricketers. Even the Kiwis, for their part, had righted this historical wrong only in July this year after signing a five-year contract with their teams.
Across the cricketing world, calls for greater inclusion and equality have been on. Earlier last year, the popular Cadbury advertisement from the 1990s that depicted a male cricketer’s girlfriend running towards him and dancing for his victory was recreated with the roles reversed. Last year in October, the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) did away with the term “batsman” and replaced it with “batter.” Also, the pride that many cricketers and cricket fans associate with cricket being a “gentleman’s game” is not without its dated approach to how even the seemingly harmless semantics are heavily gendered and exclusionary.
Unfortunately, though, the central contracts of Indian cricketers remain unchanged. While the pay scale of male cricketers is divided into four categories, female cricketers are divided into three. The disparity in pay of these central contracts remains unchanged which was revised in 2018. For example, male players in Category A+ get Rs 7 crore per year — this is in sharp contrast to female cricketers who get Rs 50 lakhs for the same category. The junior-most category of male cricketers is Category C with Rs 1 crore per year. For women cricketers from the same category, it’s just Rs 10 lakh. This annual sum is different from the match fee that’s paid separately — the BCCI’s decision makes only the match fee equal and not these annual contracts.
While the refreshing decision by the BCCI is welcome, we still have a long way to go towards more meaningful inclusion. Even within the BCCI, there have been calls for gender sensitivity. Saba Karim, the former India wicketkeeper who served as BCCI’s general manager from 2018 to 2021, has been vocal about how, during her tenure, there was substantial work done to make cricket stadiums more gender friendly, or improving the infrastructure of dressing rooms and washrooms.
One can only hope that the next steps taken by the BCCI will be towards narrowing the massive gap between the annual contracts of our male and female cricketers. Our women’s cricket team has proven their talent time and again, winning the Women's Asia Cup title earlier this year and even bagging the silver medal at the Commonwealth Games 2022 held in Birmingham. We don’t see any reason why the pay gap in the annual, central contracts should be this massive. In a male-dominated sport, such disparities surprise no one but they certainly stifle potential female cricket stars from our cities to towns from even considering cricket as a feasible and practical career option.
One can only hope that the BCCI can further build on this welcome decision on equal match fees and that the journey towards meaningful gender parity in Indian cricket will not be a long and arduous one.
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