BCCI needs to go beyond headline management to make real difference to women's cricket

On 20 May, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) secretary Jay Shah announced that the India women’s cricket team will be playing their first-ever pink ball day-night Test later this year. Shah, in his tweet making the announcement, highlighted that with the decision, the Indian cricket board was taking forward its “commitment towards women’s cricket”.

Taking forward our commitment towards women's cricket, I am extremely pleased to announce that Team India @BCCIwomen will play in their first-ever pink ball day-night Test later this year in Australia.

— Jay Shah (@JayShah) May 20, 2021

Earlier, in March this year, Shah confirmed that the women’s team will be playing their first Test in seven years in June against England.

On the occasion of #InternationalWomensDay, I’m pleased to announce that #TeamIndia @BCCIWomen will play a one-off Test match against @ECB_cricket later this year. The women in blue will be donning the whites again 🙏🏻 🇮🇳

— Jay Shah (@JayShah) March 8, 2021

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There are no doubts that Test matches are massive news for a team deprived of five-day cricket. But the true significance or the impact of BCCI’s decision can only be assessed when we take everything into the consideration. Yes, the team will be playing their first Test in seven years in England, but this comes on the back of 15 odd months where they got just a five-match ODI series and three T20Is to play. In fact, their first match of 2021 came exactly 364 days after they last took the field. Let this be put into perspective once again. The women’s team of the world’s richest cricket board didn’t play a single game for 364 days. This, after the last match they played in March 2020 was the T20 World Cup final against Australia at the boisterous Melbourne Cricket Ground. That’s a very mean way of rewarding the team for their odds-defying campaign at the World Cup. In July last year, BCCI cancelled the women team's tour to England for a September tri-series citing COVID-19 restrictions but successfully managed to host the Indian Premier League (IPL) in September-November in the UAE. Their January 2021 tour to Australia was also cancelled owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. The team’s wait for international cricket continued in a period where Australia, England, New Zealand, West Indies, Pakistan, and South Africa played competitive matches on the global stage. The scheduling mess just doesn’t end here. The Women’s T20 Challenge - which, BCCI was reportedly not keen on hosting in the first place - was scheduled at a time where it directly clashed with the dates of Women’s Big Bash League, forcing Indian players to miss out on the premier T20 competition. The elite Australian cricketers were also unable to participate in the so-called women’s IPL. During this extended off-season which, by all means, would have been excruciatingly frustrating for Mithali Raj and Co, the men participated in a full-fledged IPL, completed the tour of Australia, and came back to complete a four-match home Test series against England. BCCI’s unfair treatment of women’s team just doesn’t end here. It’s a gross injustice that the team wasn’t offered a competitive game for 364 days after reaching the T20 World Cup final, but the pain was compounded by the board’s failure to disburse the prize money that the team rightfully earned by reaching the summit clash of the global event. [caption id=“attachment_9654031” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] India’s women’s cricket team played its first match of 2021 exactly 364 days after they last took the field. File image.[/caption] According to a report in UK’s The Telegraph, champions Australia were paid their prize money of $1.6 million a month after the tournament, which ended on 8 March 2020. England, who reached the semi-finals, received their prize money ($120,000) two months after the event. Indians are still waiting for their share of the $500,000 reward. In the damage control mode, the sources have informed that money will reach the bank account of players by the end of this week. There’s more. On 19 May, BCCI announced the annual contract list for women cricketers. The number of contracted players in the fresh list has gone down from 22 to 19. The annual contracts for members of the national women’s team were first announced in 2015 . At that time, India were the only side among the top-eight women’s teams to not have annual contracts for their women cricketers. The 2015-16 season contract had two categories, Grade A with Rs 15 lakh income and Grade B with Rs 10 lakh. The fees was hiked in 2018 with three categories Grade A (Rs 50 lakh), Grade B (Rs 30 lakh), and Grade C (10 lakh). For perspective, the Grade C category for the senior men’s team is worth Rs 1 crore, a cool 100 percent more than what Grade A women cricketers Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandhana, and Poonam Yadav make. This doesn’t put BCCI in good light, especially when compared to its peers like Cricket Australia (CA). In 2017, CA increased the wages of women’s cricketers by 125 percent. In 2019, they announced 12 months of paid parental leave. They also topped up the prize money won by the Australian women’s team at the 2020 T20 World Cup to ensure parity with the men’s equivalent winnings. Make no mistake, BCCI deserves the credit for significantly hiking the fees in 2018 but that was three years ago. Under the new leadership of Sourav Ganguly, one would have expected a reduction in the ridiculous pay gap between men and women cricketers. One would have expected a similar progressive move that the board took in 2018 after introducing the contracts in 2015. At the domestic level, the BCCI is planning to host  Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 tournament, Vijay Hazare Trophy, and Ranji Trophy for senior men during the 2021-22 calendar while only T20 League and One Day league will be held for senior women. There will be no Challenger Trophy or inter-zonal three-day games for senior women. [caption id=“attachment_9653671” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Despite heightened criticism, BCCI are yet to launch a full-fledged women’s IPL. Image: Sportzpics for BCCI[/caption] Now, with everything together, when we look at the historic announcement of pink-ball Test, the enthusiasm does die down a little. Two Test matches in the same calendar for the women’s team is no doubt welcome news but that shouldn’t distract us from the pile of problems that plague women’s cricket in India. What women cricketers in this country truly need is more matches — both at domestic and international levels. A full-fledged women’s IPL can revolutionise the game in the same fashion it did for their male counterparts. Regular contracts and better pay are non-negotiable. Providing all this would mean taking forward the “commitment towards women’s cricket” in real terms. Looking at the snail-pace progress that BCCI is making on important fronts of women’s cricket, it appears that the cricket board is least interested in addressing real concerns and tackling bigger problems. Test match announcements for a team with almost no experience and no plans to play practice matches indicate a situation where the board is aiming for short-term gains over long-term sustainability. It comes across as a ploy for headline management that hopefully derails tough questions. Problem is, there are just too many of them.