If the report from the Telegraph is to be believed, Indian women cricketers have not been paid the prize money owed to them from the 2020 Women’s T20 World Cup which happened in January 2020.
The Indian team came up second against hosts Australia in the final of the tournament in front of more than 80,000 people at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) and were entitled to collectively receive $500,000 (£350,000).
However, as per UK news outlet the Telegraph, BCCI still holds the entire prize pot awarded to India’s players, more than a year after they earned it.
Tom Moffat, the CEO of FICA, the Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations, told Telegraph Sport that it was made aware of the non-payment of the prize money in August 2020, when it raised the issue with the International Cricket Council. At the same time, FICA contacted the Indian players to offer support.
"Prize money is payable to players for their on-field performance in pinnacle events and the late non-payment of money owing to players is unacceptable. We encourage players in India to consider getting organized as part of a players’ association so they, and the game in India, can benefit from collective player representation in the same way that their fellow professionals around the world do,” Moffat told Telegraph Sport.
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India and Pakistan are the only major cricket nations to not have a recognized players’ body.
ICC usually pays out the prizemoney within a week of the tournament ending. Usually, this is direct to the respective team’s national governing bodies, in this case, the Board of Control for Cricket in India, unless that body asks the ICC to pay the players directly.
The full prize money pot must then be allocated among the squad of players and should be paid within two weeks of receiving it from the ICC. It is up to the BCCI to determine how the prize money should be apportioned, whether equally or according to a sliding scale.
The Telegraph called it an embarrassing revelation for the BCCI which boasted of earning almost $550 million in revenue from hosting the Indian Premier League during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Also the Indian women cricketers didn’t play a single match since the final of the ICC T20 World Cup final, until recently when South Africa women toured India for ODIs and T20I matches.
Before the 2020 T20 Women’s World Cup, the ICC increased the women’s prize pot by 320% from the 2018 event, with the 2020 tournament winners set to receive $1 million. Cricket Australia announced that, if their women won, it would make up the difference in prize money to that awarded by the ICC to the winner of the previous men’s T20 World Cup, by adding an additional $600,000.
Telegraph further reported that CA paid their women’s cricketers their respective shares of the USD $1.6 million the month after the tournament’s conclusion, in April 2020. Similarly, England’s players, who reached the semi-finals of the tournament and therefore earned $120,000 between them, also received their prize money within two months of the final.
Furthermore, the news outlet calculated that if the prize money was split evenly amongst each of the 15 players in India’s World Cup squad, the prize money that they earned amounts to about $33,000 each. Only 13 women’s players in the country earn more than this amount per year, with the top women’s salaries amounting to just $69,000.
One administrator, who did not wish to be identified, described the prize money as “life-changing for some of those women".
(Telegraph inputs)
