Women’s cricket set to be professionalised in Australia

MELBOURNE: Cricket Australia (CA) has presented a revamped financial payment structure that will enable the women cricketers to have a fully professional sporting career at both international and domestic levels, it was announced on Tuesday.

CA CEO James Sutherland said the offer was for a new five-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), and contained a number of landmark features. Through a financial package, CA “will achieve gender equity by ensuring that the minimum and average hourly pay will be the same for state men and women in 2017/18”.

“We are pleased that the Australian Cricketers Association (ACA) agrees with us that women, for the first time, should be part of the MOU, and we have proposed a financial model that has gender equity at its heart,” said Sutherland in a release.

“Under the proposal, women will receive an immediate average pay increase of more than 125 percent. As a result, our international women cricketers will see their average pay increase from $79,000 to $179,000, as of July 1 this year. By 2021, we expect to see our international women cricketers earning an average of $210,000.

“And our state female cricketers, playing both Women’s National Cricket League (WNCL) and Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL), will see their average remuneration more than double from $22,000 to $52,000 this year.”

CA also announced match fees for the WNCL and the Matador Cup will be exactly the same: a one-day game for a state cricketer is worth the same to both men and women.

“We are also introducing, for the first time, prizemoney for the WNCL of $258,000 and the WBBL of $309,000 this coming summer, Sutherland added.

In addition to this landmark for women, CA is proposing increased pay for all players. Total potential remuneration for all players, including guaranteed and performance elements, will increase from $311 million over the course of the current MOU period (2012-17) to $419 million over the next MOU (2017-22), an increase of 35 percent.

Sutherland pointed out that those men who represented Australia on the international stage would see their average yearly retainer increase to $816,000 by 2021/22. With match fees and performance bonuses, the expected average income for these players (including BBL payments) will be $1.45m by 2021/22, an increase of 25 percent on 2016/17 ($1.16 million).

Domestic male cricketers (state competitions and BBL) will also be earning an average of $235,000 by 2021/22, up 18 percent from $199,000 in 2016/17.

“We have placed the emphasis on increasing the guaranteed amount that the men will receive, rather than rely on any projected increase in revenue,” Mr Sutherland said.

“This is a landmark agreement. We are now looking forward to sitting down with the ACA to work through the details and we are confident we will be able to announce a completed agreement before June 30.”