Hundred will offer men and women equal prize money
Winners earn £150,000 from £600,000 pot We are making progress all the time, says Knight
The Hundred will offer equal prize money to men and women as the England and Wales Cricket Board commits to making it a “gender balanced” tournament.
An overall prize pot of £600,000 will be shared equally. The winning teams will each receive £150,000, and the runners-up £75,000. The losing semi-finalist (there will be only one as the team who top the group are guaranteed a place in the final) will receive £50,000. There will also be four individual awards: £10,000 will go to the most valued player, and £5,000 to each of the leading run-scorer, wicket-taker and fielder.
For the women, the Hundred replaces the Kia Super League Twenty20 competition, which had an overall prize fund of only £65,000.
The prize equality follows criticism of the Football Association for women earning just £25,000 for winning the FA Cup, compared to men, who receive £3.6million. The Hundred prizes are on a par with the women’s Big Bash and follow the International Cricket Council offering $1.1million (£860,000) to the winners of the current Women’s T20 World Cup, which matched the men’s prize from the last tournament in 2016. There is no prize money in rugby union for winning the women’s Six Nations.
The England and Wales Cricket Board has guaranteed that the women will receive the same daily allowance as the men (£35), travel in the same standard of coach and hotels. Overseas players will fly to England in business class.
Heather Knight, the captain of the England women’s team, told The Daily Telegraph: “It’s great news. We’re making progress all the time in the women’s game and year on year our game is growing – decisions like this help accelerate the growth. The Hundred is a big opportunity for women’s cricket. The Kia Super League was fantastic and it helped women’s cricket step forward, but the scale and the platform of the Hundred could be huge.
“When I think back on what the game looked like when I made my England debut 10 years ago, the progression is just massive.
“My focus is obviously on the field, but all the stuff around that is what helps more girls want to take up the game. When I was a kid I looked up to the men’s team because I didn’t really know there was an England women’s team, but now the game has moved on to such an extent that we’ve got equal prize money. Our aims are never really about money, but it’s about being given the same opportunities. It says a lot about how we’re all looking at the women’s game that we’re being rewarded in equal measure.”
There remains a large gap in pay, with the average women’s salary in the Hundred just 12 per cent of that of the men. The average female salary is £8,000 compared to the men’s of around £82,000. The highest-earning female is paid £15,000 compared to £125,000 for their male equivalent.
“It would be wrong for us to expect to immediately earn the same as the men – the women’s game isn’t played on the same scale at the moment,” said Knight, who will captain the London Spirit team based at Lord’s. “It’s about the direction of travel and everyone who works in cricket knows that women’s cricket is moving forward all the time. Equal prize money is another important development. One day we’ll move towards equal pay.
“What’s also important is that we don’t always judge ourselves by the men’s game. For such a long time the men’s game has been how people understand ‘cricket’, but I’m more interested in how someone like Sophie Ecclestone can point to better opportunities than someone 10 years older than her at the same point in her career, and how girls who are now 10 are going to have even more opportunities when they’re 20.”
The Hundred, which starts on July 17, will add 40 more female professional cricketers and the nine matches that are double headers with the men’s competition will be shown live on Sky. The final will be broadcast live on BBC Two.