Subject: Sports Law

Topic: Measures to Increase Popularity of Women’s Cricket in India

and a subsequent levelling of pay scale across genders.

Faculty: Prof. Twinkle Maheshwari

Name: Hrushit Divatia

Roll Number: A003

Introduction:

India as a country is budding ground for several different sports, in terms of popularity and
appeal. Amongst these, the most popular and established sport is cricket, with several billion
dollars invested in it every year. Despite these colossal investments, one can observe a great
disparity between Finances in Men’s and Women’s Cricket. It must be noted that the quality
of cricket in both categories is of a similar, world standard level. However, we still observe a
greatly inferior salary caps for the Women’s division and an all in all lack of relative funding.
The aim of this project is to identify and address the reason behind this disparity in financial
backing as well as suggest viable solutions which will eventually result in a step towards equal
pay for crickets across the sport, regardless of gender. This will in turn result in the growth of
the sport’s popularity.

Research Objective:

1. To identify whether the pay gap in both categories of cricket is justified.

2. To understand ways to close this gap with focus on the commercial side.
3. To suggest possible changes and improvements in the BCCI Rules to promote the goal
of equal pay across genders.

Research Question:

1. To what extent can the inequality of pay in Men’s and Women’s cricket be reduced in
the short term?
2. To what extent can legislative changes made by the BCCI impact this inequality?
3. How can changes on the commercial side of the sport influence the salary caps in
Women’s cricket?

Research Methodology:

Given the nature of the research, the primary source of data collection will be secondary data.
The given topic has several aspects and to cover the same, various articles and websites will
need to be analysed. First, an identification of the inequality in pay would be necessary, for
this, Salary caps from the BCCI guidelines will be examined along with the appeal and
viewership of both Women’s and Men’s cricket. It would also be necessary to identify any pre-
existing steps that have been taken by the Sports Authority of India or the BCCI to close down
the aforementioned pay gap. Once these details have been consolidated, a further study on ways
to improve the overall commercial appeal of Women’s cricket which would create an
uncontested basis for an increase in salary caps. This will be done by understanding how to
bring more money and investment into the sport. Additional research to suggest viable changes
for BCCI in its rules and regulations will also take place in order to uplift the sport even further.

Cricket Salaries in India:

It is common knowledge that the Men’s Cricket Team gets paid much higher salaries as
opposed to the Women’s Cricket Team. On the surface this seems to stem from the difference
in commercial success between the two genders, however, a deeper look into this very aspect
will allow us to question the merit behind monumental pay gap and whether or not it is
justified?1

The first scenario that needs to be considered is pitting the two largest competitions both the
Indian sides enter into, their respective ICC World Cups. This is done because number and
opponent in each bilateral series is not fixed for both the sides hence, they cannot be easily
compared, while a standard ICC organised event has a certain level of consistency, in terms of
teams and the regularity in its occurrence. As per data provided by the International Cricket
Council, the viewership for the Men’s and Women’s edition was 1.7 billion and 73 million2,
respectively. On first glance, this may seem like a lot however, the Men’s edition of the World
Cup plays significantly larger number of matches, 48 as compared to the Women’s 23
matches.3 Once, adjusted for this, we can conclude that the Women’s edition had 14% of the
viewership the Men’s Edition had. What is alarming is the fact that the Top Women Cricketer’s
in the country are paid only 7% of the salaries given to the men. This clearly indicates two
major issues; 1. Women are paid substantially less money as compared to Men and 2. The
defence of broadcasting outreach also seems shaky as women should be paid twice as much if
the aforementioned rules were followed. The BCCI is far richer than any other cricket board
and this gap in payment could easily be rectified.

1
Forbes Africa. “Unequal Pay for Equal Play.” 4 Oct. 2018
2
Tewari, Saumya. “ICC Women's Cricket World Cup 2020 Drew 74.9 Million TV Viewers.” Mint, 23 Mar.
2020
3
International Cricket Council's Report on 2019 Men's Cricket World Cup: Most Watched Ever, 24 July 2019
Another very interesting comparison that can be made is between International Women’s
cricket and Domestic Men’s cricket in India. While female athletes in this sport can earn
anywhere between 10-50 lakh on an annual basis, domestic cricketers who will never have a
sniff of international cricket or primetime broadcasting get paid much more liberally. In Ranji
trophy alone, wherein a team plays a minimum of 9 matches, players earn between Rupees
70,000 to 1,45,000 per match.4 This means that by playing just 9 matches in a domestic
tournament, they can more than female International cricketers do through the entire year. This
is only the beginning, there are multiple other tournaments in the domestic calendar such as the
Vijay Hazare trophy, the Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy and etc. which will earn them similar
amounts of money.5 There are 2 very major problems that we come across here, firstly, by
giving potentially higher salaries to Ranji cricketers, the BCCI is admitting that even the
domestic form of the Men’s sport is more essential and important than the International form
of the Women’s sport, this illuminates the neglect that the women’s team has faced in terms of
its marketability and financial backing. Secondly, these domestic trophies we speak do not even
garner the same number of viewership that the International Women’s cricket does. It is no
secret that certain formats of domestic cricket are dying in terms of their media and audience
appeal and the fact that the BCCI is able to still pump in large amounts of money to ensure that
cricket is a viable sport even for athletes who are not international standard, clearly shows that
they have the financial capacity to do the same for women’s cricket by boosting its salaries and
overall marketability but is still not doing it with the eagerness and energy it should be.

International Comparisons:

The Indian Men’s team is the highest paid cricket team in the world by a distance, in fact the
second best paid team, Australia, gets paid less than half as much, however, this same gap in
salaries for Women’s cricket is not present on a worldwide scale. Female athletes from the
countries such as Australia, South Africa, England and New Zealand all get paid more than
their Indian counterparts6, it cannot be emphasized enough, that the BCCI is far richer than any
of these boards and India as a country has the ability to garner much more viewership and

4
“Cricket Rewind 2017: IPL Rakes in Big Money, Indian Domestic Circuit Suffers.” Hindustan Times, 30 Dec.
2017
5
Ibid.
6
Forbes Africa. “Unequal Pay for Equal Play.” 4 Oct. 2018
commercial success as compared to these other countries, which begs the question, how can
attempt to improve the salary contracts provided to the Women’s team.

BCCI and its Role:

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is the governing body under which all aspects
of cricket, from youth development, merchandising, franchising, broadcasting, marketing and
etc. are looked after. The BCCI has its own set of Bye Laws known as the BCCI Rules and
Regulations which grants them the power to change the salary structure and the cricketers who
would fall under the salary bracket on an annual basis. This makes for a very flexible structure
that can be regularly altered keeping in mind the dynamic nature and requirements of the sport.
This also plays an important role in the discussion of upliftment of Women’s cricket as they
have the power to improve and adjust their fee structure as when they see fit, hence, there can
never really be an excuse for underpaying the female cricketers ss something out of their
control.7

Under Rule 8(p) of the BCCI Rules and Regulations, it considered to be a duty of the board to
fix and provide fair salaries and wages for its professional cricketers which would include
female cricketers.8 At the current juncture of cricket, it is widely believed that this is not done
so and should be enforced. The BCCI must also understand that the Men’s cricket team was
first established in 1932, 88 years ago and has seen development since then, which has allowed
that variant of the sport to become as successful as it due to the many opportunities given along
the way. The sad truth of the matter, which the BCCI must accept and consider is that the
Women’s game was never allowed to flourish or even be formulated in the same way and the
Women’s team was only founded in 1976, a full 44 years later and has been which is exactly
half the lifespan of the Men’s game. Moreover, the women’s team did not see a similar kind of
support and popularity amongst the general public due to the regressive stigma behind women
playing sports in this country and across the world. The BCCI must realise that that unfortunate
hurdle has now been crossed and extra effort and money, even if it is disproportionate to its
commercial success, must be put into Women’s cricket give it the push to catalyse its lost years
of development. Keeping this in mind and applying Rule 8(e)9 and Rule (g) of the BCCI Rules

7
The Board of Control for Cricket in India: Rules and Regulations.
8
The Board of Control for Cricket in India: Rules and Regulations. Rule 8(p).
9
The Board of Control for Cricket in India: Rules and Regulations. Rule 8(e).
and Regulations, the BCCI can immediately increase the salaries of players which will in turn
boost the popularity amongst young women to take up cricket as a sport.

Methods for Long Term Success:

While increasing player’s salaries to be disproportionate to their returns is something strongly

advocated for in this paper, one must understand that in order for the sport to have long term
sustainability in terms of nurturing world class talent and the commercial side of it, other areas
of Women’s cricket will also need development, in order to increase audience appeal and gain
more revenue. This would result in a steady rise of the sport which would eventually allow
them to command salaries very similar to that given in the Men’s game.

Emergence of Stars in Women’s Cricket:

Indian players like Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli among many others are a part of every
cricket discussion, not only in India but also the World, this is because of their star quality and
dominance in International Cricket. On the other hand, female cricketers in India do not boast
such a long list of stars and this is one problem that can be directly solved by the
disproportionate rise in salaries. The reason India has so many stars is multi-fold, but they all
stem from the fact that there is an immense amount of money being offered to individuals
involved in the game. They are able to get the best possible coaching staff due to the high
salaries provided to them which can also be easily implemented in the women’s game, but most
importantly, the high salaries provided to male cricketers means that a lot more of them see it
as a viable career and hence, there is large pool of talent to nurture and choose from. If the
aspiring female cricketers were able to secure better salaries, more of them would be willing
to make cricket their main focus, hence, resulting in a greater number of star quality players
emerging out of India.

Converting Stars into Icons:

Another observation that can be made for the Men’s format is that players Tendulkar and Kohli
are not only brilliant players on the pitch, but they have also turned into national icons and
almost worshipped off the pitch. This is due to the commercial ploy of ensuring that these
cricketers are not just visible on the pitch but elsewhere in other sports, advertisements, charity
events etc. They are lionised to a great extent for their achievements and hence, attracting more
and more viewers to the sport,10 their status as role models will also engage newer brands and
organisations to associate themselves with the player and in turn become a part of the
commercial atmosphere around the sport. This positive treatment of female players will not
only inspire more women to become cricketers but also make the sport commercially more
successful.

Special Initiatives and Media Coverage:

As has already been discussed, the development of women’s cricket was greatly supressed until
very recently and hence, special initiatives will benefit a surge in public interest to a great
extent. For instance, the ‘100% Cricket Scheme’11 launched by the ICC is taking steps to
involve players from each country to promote cricket and add another 1 million women to the
game of cricket by the end of the year. While this initiative may have come to a halt due to the
unforeseen pandemic, such campaigns can resume once again when cricket itself returns on a
regular basis. Adequate advertising and primetime Media Coverage is also something the BCCI
should focus on. Ensuring that their matches are played on the most popular broadcasting
channels along with appropriate advertising would mean that people would be more likely to
watch the matches. Including aspects such as fantasy sports, which has resulted in a spike in
the already highly viewed Men’s cricket tournaments such as the ICC World Cup and the IPL,
would be very beneficial to Women’s cricket as the viewers would have their own personal
stake in each match, hence, gripping them more and encouraging them to watch the match.
Certain steps to ensure that Women’s cricket get more media coverage have already been taken
and a wonderful example of that would be the growing development of the Women’s IPL which
is very likely to garner a lot of commercial success and viewership.

10
Forbes Africa. “Unequal Pay for Equal Play.” 4 Oct. 2018
11
ICC Media Release: The ICC Aim for 1 Million More Girls Playing Cricket in the next Year as Innovative
Campaign to Drive Promotion of the Womens Game Is Launched.
Conclusion:

The Cricket Board and the economy surrounding cricket in India is by far the wealthiest in the
world. While this is visible in the finances and compensation for individuals in Men’s Cricket,
the same cannot be said for Women’s cricket. Countries such as Australia, England and South
Africa whose cricket boards earn substantially less money as compared to the BCCI, all have
higher salary caps for the Women’s team and have started making active efforts to move
towards equal pay as early as 2018. The BCCI is in a position of great financial strength and
can rectify the inconsistencies in salary caps for the women’s cricket team. Moreover, they
must also consider the reasons behind the women’s game being so far behind in their
commercial success and aim to bridge the gap using strong measures. The BCCI in order to
ensure there is long term improvement in Women’s cricket must not only change its Bye Laws,
but also put in additional effort to capture the large viewer base in India for it to reach the
success that Men’s team has witnessed. The disparity in salary caps in extremely unfortunate
and must be rectified immediately with the help of the suggestions provided in the paper above.

India is a country that has arrived at the 21st Century dominating the sport of cricket, there is
no justifiable reason for men to be paid more than women. Steps need to be taken to bridge this
gap and the end goal of equal pay must be reached, if not overnight, across a calculated and
reasonable time period.