Jay Shah, the Honorary Secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) recently claimed that the US Open, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), and the International Cricket Council (ICC) followed BCCI's steps to introduce pay parity for men and women players.
BOOM found that while the ECB and ICC introduced equal pay after BCCI, the US Open has been doing it for decades and celebrated 50 years of pay parity in 2023.
Furthermore, while India's women cricketers are paid the same match fees as the men’s team, their retainers are only a fraction of those paid to their male peers.
Jay Shah, who is also the head of the Finance and Commercial Affairs (F&CA) committee at the ICC, was speaking at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad on September 28, 2023 while launching 'CRIIIO 4 GOOD', an online learning initiative to promote gender equality. The event was also attended by Union Minister of Education Dharmendra Pradhan and vice-captain of Indian women's cricket team Smriti Mandhana.
"As you know, we are living in an era of women empowerment. BCCI just did pay parity for men and women (players). I am pleased to inform you that after our decision, US Open Tennis, English Cricket Board, and ICC did pay parity for men and women," Jay Shah said at the event.
News outlets including ANI (archive), Times of India (archive), and Republic TV(archive) reported his remarks.
ANI also quoted Jay Shah on its official X account on September 28 but deleted it after several people pointed out the inaccuracy in his statement as far as the US Open was concerned.
New Zealand was the first country to introduce equal match fees for men and women in July 2022. The players' association signed a five-year deal with New Zealand Cricket, the governing body of the sport in the country that ensured equal match fees for men and women across all formats.
The BCCI announced pay parity for men and women cricketers on October 27, 2022. Shah posted on X on the same day and announced the board's "first step towards tackling discrimination" by introducing equal match pay for both men and women contracted players.
Meanwhile the US Open, which introduced equal pay in 1973, marked 50 years of equal prize money at the tournament this year.
Billie Jean King, winner of the women's tournament in 1972 expressed her disappointment at the unequal prize money given to the men and women champions. While Jean King was rewarded $10,000, her male counterpart, Ilie Năstase made $25,000. It was during this time that she hinted at a possible boycott of the games the following year if the prize money wasn't equalised. The administration took heed of her words, and with that, introduced equal prize money for men and women champions for the 1973 tournament.
The legendary former world number 1 player has been at the forefront of demanding equality for women in the world of tennis. In 1973, she forged history after accepting former male player Bobby Riggs' challenge to compete with him in a $100,000 winner-takes-all match, famously known today as the 'Battle of the Sexes'. King defeated Riggs in straight sets, creating a cultural shift in the way women's tennis was perceived and went on to establish herself as the progressive face of women's tennis.
Contrary to Jay Shah's claim, the BCCI did not precede the US Open in introducing pay parity. However, both the ICC and ECB announced equal pay for men and women months after the BCCI. The ICC did so in July this year and the ECB followed in August.
The Pay Gap Still Exists In Cricket
It is noteworthy that the equal match fee introduced by the BCCI last year does not include the yearly retainer paid to the players.
A retainer is paid annually to players and the amount depends on which category the player falls under-- Grade A+, Grade A, Grade B, and Grade C.
While the highest match fees is Rs 15 lakhs for Grade A+ players, the highest retainer can go up to Rs 7 crore for men's players, The Hindu reported.
In comparison to this, the highest retainer paid to the women cricketers was only Rs 50 lakhs, which is 7% of the fee given to their male counterparts as of 2022.
"The reason why the retainer is not equal is because they don't believe, in their hearts, that women need to be paid equally, " veteran sports journalist Sharda Ugra told BOOM.
"The retainer is decided on a whim. It is a random number that has come out of nowhere,” she said.
Ugra also pointed out that India does not have a professionally designed payment system while announcing performance bonuses like other countries.
"Even though the match fee is equal, it is important to compare how many matches the women's team actually gets to play," she added.
Data from ICC's Future Tours Programme (FTP) reveals that from May 2022-April 2025, the men's team will play 26 test matches and the women's team will only play 2.
Indian captain Harmanpreet Kaur on a podcast said that the team needed to play more test matches while noting that improvement has been made compared to the previous years.
Apart from the World Cups, the men's team is scheduled to play 120 matches across all formats between the same period and the women's team in comparison will only play 65 matches.
England, Australia, and South Africa's women's teams are all playing more test matches than the Indian team in 2023.
“In countries like New Zealand, Australia, and England, the players have the power of collective bargaining which is why they are able to work out good deals despite not having the same resources," Ugra said.
“Their cricket players' association does the negotiating. We don't have any mechanism of this sort," she added.