The Indian women cricketers, who reached the final of the T20 World Cup 2020 in Australia, will receive their long-pending prize money share of USD 500,000 this week, a senior BCCI official confirmed on Sunday.

This came after it was revealed by a report by the Telegraph UK that the BCCI was yet to pay the Indian women cricketers their share of prize money which they deserved despite losing in the final of the T20 World Cup to Australia in January 2020 in front of an MCG crowd of 80,000 plus.

“The members of the Indian women’s cricket team will be getting the share of their prize money by the end of this week. The transactions have been processed and I am expecting that they will receive their share very soon. We received the prize money amount late last year,” the senior board functionary told PTI.

The processing of players’ payments in BCCI does take around three to four months for all teams (across age groups).

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However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the BCCI headquarters in Mumbai have been shut which has led to delay in payments all across.

“It’s not just one payment for women. Whether it’s the central contract of the men’s team, international match fees, domestic fees of men and women, everything is taking a bit of time because of the prevailing situation,” a former BCCI office-bearer, still associated with a state unit, said.

He further informed: “Even before the COVID situation worsened, the domestic season would end in March and the complete payments were only cleared by September. So, in this case you need to check when BCCI received the payments. If they received just after the tournament, then it’s a delay but the processing does take some time. And to the best of my knowledge, it’s the same for both men and women.”

(PTI inputs)