From August 1997 to the end of 2004, a group of India’s male players kept engaging with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) over what was then called graded payments.
The plan was to secure the future of the Indian team, with the women not being under the umbrella of the BCCI then. It took long parleys between Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble on one side and Ratnakar Shetty, the former BCCI General Manager, on the other side to get some discussions going.
It so happened that Shetty happened to be an administrative manager on the 1997 Sri Lankan tour and he began interacting with the players about match fees.
Back then, Indian players were paid just a match fee and nothing else. Australian and English players too were in discussions at around the same time with their boards through their player associations for annual contracts.
Finally, what gave the whole thing a push was the fact that Kumble was rendered hors de combat for the entire year of 2000-01 with a shoulder injury. Imagine Kumble had no pay from the BCCI for the whole year because he was not playing. With his arm in a sling and thanks to the support of a new group of seniors led by Dravid, skipper Sourav Ganguly alongside the veteran Sachin Tendulkar, Kumble began negotiations.
Kumble and Dravid became the face of the contract negotiations which finally ended in 2004 when the players were offered central contracts.
Mid-way, the players hit a roadblock in 2002 during the Champions Trophy when the same group of seniors took on the Board over ICC’s ambush marketing clause. A player association also involving the likes of the late MAK Pataudi, Arun Lal, Ravi Shastri was formed to take on the Board.
That paid dividends as the Board finally yielded to the demands of the senior players in 2004.
Female Players Added to Fold Later
However, one set of players were still not part of the system. It would take another 12-18 months for India's female cricketers to become part of the 'mainstream' or should we say, to be integrated with their male counterparts and for the women's body to be incorporated with the BCCI.
So, at the time the system was that 26 per cent of the Board’s revenue would be shared by the players. It was decided that 13 per cent would go to the male players, while the remaining 10.4 per cent would go to the domestic and the last miniscule part of 2.6 per cent would go to the juniors.
When the women were finally integrated into the system, rather reluctantly, the women were added to the 2.6 per cent bracket. The reluctance to involve the female cricketers in the system was reflected in the way they were added to the lowest bracket.
The female cricketers were still not accepted wholeheartedly by the decidedly male mainstream administration and the players. There was derision and complete dismissal of the requirements of the female cricket ecosystem which was integrated with the male cricket set-up worldwide in 2005.
BCCI Failed to Prioritised Women's Cricket For Far too Long
The Indian system was the sleeping giant as far as women’s cricket was concerned. If you look at the period between 2005 and 2017, Indian women’s cricket was a period of missed opportunities. The BCCI was not keen on going the whole hog, whereas Australia and England kept ruling the roost.
It was reflected in the performances of the women’s team on the field. The fact that there were regular disappointments on the pitch meant that the support from the Board kept decreasing. The early exit during the 2013 ODI World Cup at home confirmed the complete disinterest that was part of the system. This was a body blow.
West Indies emerged as a strong team and displaced India as the fourth best side in the world. Most cricket boards started announcing annual contracts for their female cricketers. Pakistan too stole a march over India by announcing central contracts for their female cricketers. It felt as if India was slipping further and further away.
It required the intervention of the Honourable Supreme Court for women’s cricket to get a new lease of life in India. Whatever the world may say about the impact of the Justice Lodha reforms on Indian cricket, it did leave a lasting impact on women’s cricket in the country.
CoA Finally Introduced Positive Reforms For Women's Cricket
It was during the time of the Committee of Administrators (CoA) that the annual contracts for the female cricketers was introduced, rather belatedly. There was a renewed interest in the women’s game. Now there is a lot of talk about the fact that the presence of former India player and captain Diana Edulji led to the emphasis on the women’s game. But well, better late than never!
The renewed interest meant that the Indian team went from being dumped out of the ODI World Cup at home in 2013 to being runner-up at the 2017 ODI World Cup. That was a huge leap in terms of performance.
It would not have been possible but for the support from the Board. Annual contracts and improved facilities meant that the players felt a lot more secure.
Off-field problems within the side derailed some of the progress, but still the Indian women’s team got through the problems. The 2020 T20 World Cup final and the 2022 Commonwealth Games silver medal are all examples of the progress that the team has made. But a major triumph still eludes the side. It will come eventually as they get closer and closer. This would not have been possible back in 2005 because they got absolutely no support when the merger happened.
Huge Pay Gap Still Prevails
Thursday's decision by the BCCI Apex Council to bring parity in the women’s and men’s match fees is therefore a landmark decision. But the disparity between the genders is still massive.
The gradation for the female players is still light years behind their male counterparts
Grade A: INR 50 lakh
Grade B: INR 30 lakh
Grade C: INR 10 lakh
The gradation for the male players is as follows:
Grade A+: INR 7 crore
Grades A: INR 5 crore
Grade B: INR 3 crore
Grade C: INR 1 crore
The highest graded female player earns way less than the lowest grade male player as a fixed annual contract from the BCCI. So, this change in the way the female players earn the same match fees is tokenism at best.
In fact, India is not the first to bring about parity in fees for male and female players. New Zealand Cricket (NZC) announced this earlier in July 2022. NZC extended the parity to domestic cricket as well to make it a truly equal set-up!
Now New Zealand's male and female players are expected to earn 29.75 percent of NZC's forecasted revenue over five years of $349m, or approximately estimated $104 million. Also the number of women earning domestic contracts has also increased from 54 to 72.
BCCI's Move Hardly Historic
So the announcement by BCCI while being laudable is hardly historic or even landmark. The women at domestic level too are earning contracts in New Zealand, whereas the domestic male players in India had to struggle for two years during Covid19 without any pay. The Board is still debating about providing contracts to domestic male cricketers, whereas the world has moved onto providing the same to the female domestic cricketers.
While the pay disparity has been addressed to a point, the issue about the number of games for the women has still not been addressed.
The women's team players much less cricket than their male counterparts. So the parity in match fees counts for nothing because the number of games just do not add up.
What use is a Rs 15 lakh match fee for a Test match if the women's team hasn't played a single Test in the last 12 months? They played two in 2021 after seven years. So does the pay equity actually mean anything in that sense?
There is some talk about the increase in graded payments for the women, hopefully that will reach some conclusion.
It is the same India where a story in a British newspaper was required to get the BCCI to release the amount due to the women’s team for being runner-up at the 2020 T20 World Cup. The money was then released to the players swiftly post the British newspaper push.
The only good thing from the entire exercise is that the time to wait has been reduced from seven years that Dravid & Co experienced to 24-48 hours in the present day. Only the faces taking decisions have changed, the processes still remain the same, archaic!
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