In a significant move, Australian cricket board has announced a payment boost for both WNCL and WBBL retainers. The board will be investing an extra A$1.2 million towards Women’s cricket.
This comes after an agreement Cricket Australia and Australian Cricketers’ Association for the season. During their meet, they came to a conclusion to invest A$4million for the season. This will include the wellbeing and the allowance fee for a partner or dependants to travel with them.
The WNCL and WBBL will see an increase of A$800,000 and $A400,000 respectively. This is equal to almost 22% and 14% increase from their current pay.
“This is another incredibly important step in driving gender equity in our game. Our players have made enormous sacrifices the last 18 months,” Nick Hockley, the Cricket Australia CEO, said.
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“We pride ourselves over results to really lead the charge about driving equality cricket and particularly investing in the growth as cricket as a sport for women and girls.
“There’s still a really big gap compared to their male counterparts but certainly we want to ensure to keep striving to make it an incredible full-time career. This week’s announcement is about pritoritising closing the gap and further demonstrating that we are the leading sport in terms of pay domestically across Australia women team sports and we’ll continue to invest in that way,” he added.
Australian skipper Meg Lanning said: “Cricket has shown that when you properly invest in female sport, the results follow and everyone benefits – the game, the fans and the players.”
Australia had won the T20I World Cup in 2020 and they were able to bring in more than 86 thousand people for the final. Also, the team had recently defeated India in the multi format series by 11-5.
