Before we get to the money in Indian women’s cricket, let’s talk about celebrations, or rather, the lack of them.
After the Women’s World Cup final, reporters asked a BCCI official whether there would be a victory parade or any public event for fans to celebrate their champion team. His reply? That he and his colleagues were flying to Dubai the next morning for an ICC meeting.
Another official, after glibly describing the women’s triumph as India’s “1983 moment,” was asked what came next for the women’s game. The best he offered as an answer was “very many things”.
Just like the Indian women team’s performance in the 2017 World Cup put greater spotlight on the women’s game and put pressure on the BCCI to give it more attention, the 2025 victory will once again force their hand. To be more proactive, organise a busier calendar, and reply to questions about where and how much they put into the women’s game. If the BCCI actually set up a separate department exclusively catered to looking after the women’s game, well, that will be first-time proof that pigs can fly.
But regardless of its widely tom-tommed ‘pay parity’ in Indian cricket (we’ll get to that later), the real big reveal of BCCI’s current view of women’s cricket was the quickfire, ad-hoc “cash prize” announcement.
Of Rs 51 crore, to “players, support staff and selection committee”. That number totals 32 (16 players, 11 support staff and five selectors) which divides equally into Rs 1.5 crore each. The cash prize splits will emerge later no doubt but let’s compare this with what happened around the two Indian World Cup victories post 1983.
According to The Sportstar in July 2024, the winners of the 2011 ICC men’s World Cup received a total of Rs 39 crores, according to the BCCI’s 2010-2011 annual report. That was Rs 2 crore each for every player, Rs 50 lakh each to coaching and support staff and Rs 25 lakh each for five selectors.
The Sportstar report says, “Minutes after Dhoni hit the winning six, the BCCI had announced an incentive of Rs. 1 crore to each player. However, after the players expressed their displeasure, the bonus amount was revised to Rs. 2 crore per player.”
In June 2024, just after India won the men’s T20 World Cup, the BCCI’s cash handout was declared as a grand Rs 125 crore – over three times that of 2011. The detailed break-up: Rs 5 crore to each player, Rs 2.5 crore to the head coach plus batting fielding and bowling coaches, with Rs 2 crore each to backroom staff: three throwdown specialists, two masseurs and strength and conditioning coach plus Rs 1 crore each to each of the five selectors.
The four reserve players too were given Rs 1crore each. The Indian team contingent totalled 42, including BCCI staffers who included video analyst, media and logistics managers, whose bonuses were paid outside this Rs 125 crore pool.
Let’s apply this identical 2024 calculation to the women’s winners, only the third Indian team in over half a century to win a 50-over World Cup. That would be Rs 80 crore to the 16 players, Rs 7.5 crore to Amol Muzumdar (head coach/ batting coach), Avishkar Salvi (bowling coach) and Munish Bali (fielding coach) together, Rs 16 crore to backroom staff – strength and conditioning coach, performance analyst, team doctor, physiotherapist, team physiotherapist, team sports science and medicine head and two masseurs – and Rs 4 crore to the four reserves. That’s a total of Rs 107.5 crore.
Bring up the idea of this award parity and watch mostly men get hot and bothered. And quickly produce a blustering word salad of ‘revenue generation’, ‘rights values’ and ‘market forces’.
Except the BCCI is not the market. What pays for media rights, sponsorship deals, IPL valuations is the market. The BCCI is an employer. It is in charge of its resources and factory floor, and whatever it chooses to do with the funds at its disposal and its performance bonuses to its employees. The market does not control that decision.
As for the funds at the BCCI’s disposal, as per its 2023-24 annual report, it has a bank balance of Rs 20,686 crore and Rs 7,988 crores in its general fund.
It is these numbers in the bank and on the balance sheet that hold up even more the mismatch.
Between the women’s award of Rs 51 crore for a 50-over World Cup played once every four years and a Rs 125 crore cash award for a T20 World Cup played every two years. There is no chance in hell that had the men won both World Cups, the 50 over in 2023 and the T20 in 2024, for there to be such a massive difference in the cash awards.
The difference: of course, gender. The ‘market forces’ argument is just a fig leaf used in and around the BCCI to pretend there are no sexist biases in place around the women in the game.
Think about it: when the Sports Ministry announces cash awards for Olympic medallists, they do not say the men's medallist will receive Rs X while the women's medallist will receive X minus 60 percent.
The BCCI’s more than very healthy bank balance is not the Sensex and the players, men and women, not stock options. They are resources to be nurtured and treasured and stakeholders to be engaged with.
To argue that Indian players who go onto the field are in fact responsible for the bottom lines of an already insanely wealthy Board can only come from small minds clinging to a large wallet. Or a marketing department that sits about scratching its heads or shelling peanuts. Or those who bristle at the idea of women cricketers being paid large amounts of money by their Board.
The market will pay whatever the market wants to pay for women’s sports, its media rights, its franchise teams and to individual athletes for endorsements. But the Board makes an active choice outside of market pressures based not on resources available or even budgeted, but on how it thinks the players and extending from that the public will respond to its cash handouts.
They may prattle on about ‘pay parity’ but the difference in cash awards to two sets of World Cup winners is in fact a clear reflection of pay patriarchy.
That other pay parity they boast about refers to match fees.
The equal fees system introduced in October 2022 pays both the men and the women the following: Rs 15 lakh a Test match, Rs 6 lakh per ODI and Rs 3 lakh per T20 International.
Over the last 12 months, the men have played 12 Tests, 11 ODIs and 19 T20 Internationals and the women zero Tests, 29 ODIs (in preparation for the World Cup) and 8 T20 Internationals. When player of the tournament Deepti Sharma was asked after the final what she hoped would happen to women’s cricket, she said, “I hope there are even more matches for us now.” More opportunity, more visibility, better performances.
The least we can hope for post the World Cup is the Indian women’s calendar will be filled up with more white-ball game time because in reality women worldwide play very few Tests. (Only two were held internationally in the last 12 months.)
The retainership contracts for men are divided into four brackets Rs 7 crore, 5 crore, 3 crore and Rs 1 crore per year and the women in three grades – Rs 50 lakh, Rs 30 lakh and Rs 10 lakh per year.
Today, it is the difference in the cash award after World Cup wins that has shown up the BCCI for its inability to put its money where its mouth indulges in non-stop, self-promotion about its contribution toward the progress of the women’s game. Which frankly is its job.
Never mind formalising state cricket contracts, the BCCI is loath to even institute a professional bonus structure for its national team for fear of surrendering the feudal power of releasing random amounts of cash. Yet it loses no time in cementing its own perks – those officials who dashed off to the ICC meeting in Dubai just after the Women’s World Cup final? They’re on an overseas allowance of US$1000 per day. The players are at US$250.
The writer is a Bengaluru-based sports journalist.
This story was first published by Newslaundry and has been republished with permission.