How big is the pay gap between Men’s and Women’s Cricket?

Cricket is a lovable sport in our country. But this is only true with the “Men’s Cricket” and not in Women’s cricket.

How big is the pay gap between Men's and Women's Cricket?

There is a huge river, which doesn’t has any bridge (currently) for Women’s cricket in India. And all thanks to BCCI for this, which is the richest cricket board in the world. But it pays most of its income to men’s cricket only.

Here’s differentiation between players’ salaries:

Grade     India Men        India Women 
A+           Rs 7 crore           N/A 
A             Rs 5 crore          Rs 50 lakh
B             Rs 3 crore          Rs 30 lakh
C             Rs 1 crore          Rs 10 lakh

As you can see, Men’s Grade C players receives Rs.1 Crore, while Women’s Grade A players receives half of what Grade C Men cricketers get.

Every player at this stage work very hard, do lots and lots of practice, sacrifices beyond one can think, at utmost they represent our country, and is this how they should treated? Is this due to their gender? Or because Women doesn’t deserve to play so called “Gentlemen’s game”? Is this fair?

I did little more research and found that, this is not just in our country, but somehow this is the scenario of entire world. This is the case in most of sports and in most of the fields. And we talk about equality in 21st century. Both men and women put in the same blood and sweat.

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There has been a significant rise in women cricketer’s salaries, but still way behind their male counterparts.
However, the disparity in the monetary rewards for the Women in blue, still continues.

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Also, we lack development of the talents at the grassroots level. You would hardly see a girl playing cricket in schools or colleges or even on the streets. This is just because Girls never knew Women’s cricket ever existed. We need more awareness programs, we need more centers for training, more opportunities and privileges.

BCCI needs to negotiate contracts for telecasting women’s cricket matches. We have an excellent team that a lot of us regret, not being able to watch their performance regularly.

Lack of sponsors in Women’s cricket is a primary concern. While men cricketers get sponsors much more than that of women cricketers. Women’s Cricket is not commercially as viable as Men’s Cricket.

Supporting Women’s sports is not a Corporate Social Responsibility, but an actual market holding lots of opportunities for brands to fetch great return on investment.

Women have a very short season as compared to the Men. Women play less series and trophies both domestic and international. And even the series which they play are too short, like 3 ODIs, 5 T20s and test matches are played rarely.

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No doubt that, there’s biological differences between males and females that have an effect on average times and strength and that’s why usually Men and Women don’t compete with each other. But sport is not just the speed and strength and if it was, then we would be interested in watching the ‘fastest’ and ‘strongest’, which might be humans against cheetahs.

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Media channels and the newspapers are still less interested in knowing and telecasting the women’s cricket score but they are quite interested in showing test matches scores and updates of Men’s cricket.

Let us tell the media and the respective cricket boards that we want them to televise more women’s sports and not just the men’s. Let’s make sure nobody is disadvantaged by their gender.

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