How much each franchise league pays in Women's Cricket

Smriti Mandhana, one of the highest paid cricketers in The Hundred, started off this year's edition on Tuesday with a match-winning 55 for the Southern Brave.

She is one of the three Indian cricketers in ECB's flagship tournament alongside Harmanpreet Kaur (Trent Rockets) and Richa Ghosh, who will play for London Spirit, captained by her Royal Challengers Bangalore teammate Heather Knight.

Apart from these three, Shafali Verma, Deepti Sharma and Jemimah Rodrigues are some other Indian players to feature in the current international leagues around the world in women's cricket.

The Hundred salaries compared to WPL

Richa Ghosh, who has been signed as the replacement for Australia's Georgia Redmayne, will earn around INR 12 to 13 Lakhs approximately.

Smriti Mandhana was retained by Southern Brave in the highest-paid bracket of The Hundred. She would earn approximately INR 33 Lakhs. This is almost ten times lower than what she earns in the Women's Premier League.

In fact, the total squad salary of the entire Southern Brave is less than what Smriti Mandhana earns in the Women's Premier League.

Women's Premier League was certainly a bigger boost in terms of money for the Indian women cricketers. During the auction, Smriti Mandhana became the highest-paid cricketer in the league with INR 3.40 Crores. Royal Challengers Bangalore also bought Richa Ghosh for INR 1.90 Crore.

Salaries over the years in WBBL, The Hundred

WBBL

The salary cap of the players has increased over the years in all the leagues so far. In the Women's Big Bash League, which began in 2015/16, the players earned between $3000 and $10,000. In 2016/17, Cricket Australia increased the payment pool for women cricketers. Based on the revised plan, each domestic player would at least earn $7000.

Later in 2017, Cricket Australia in negotiation with Australian Cricketers' Association (ACA), announced the biggest pay rise from $7.5 million to $55.2 million. This rise included the payment of their domestic competition (WNCL), and WBBL players would earn a minimum of $10,292.

In 2022, Australia increased payment for WBBL players by 14 per cent. In April 2023, CA and ACA came up with a five-year memorandum to increase the payment for women cricketers. Based on this, an Australian domestic cricketer would earn a minimum of $71,945, and a national player would earn a minimum of $110,606.

READ | Salaries of Indian cricketers: Differences between men's and women's teams

This year, WBBL will see a drafting process. For the first time, WBBL will witness a new draft process for overseas players. Each franchise can pick two to three overseas players in the draft. The domestic players will be contracted in the same way they were in earlier seasons.

The players get to nominate their price category and their availability. While there are four categories, players can nominate themselves in Gold, Silver, and Bronze. The platinum category will be decided by Cricket Australia from the nominations. The nomination process will end on August 20.

The Hundred

In 2021, the women in the highest-paid category received £24,000. The lowest pay bracket for women was £3600. In the next edition, the women had a salary range of £7500 to £31,250. In the upcoming edition, While in 2022, Women's payments say a 108 per cent increase, the ECB had announced that the salary for this year would be the same.

What's next?

In recent years, there have been several new leagues and even domestic leagues in India have started to pay their cricketers well. Though there is a long way to go in terms of salaries, a good start has been made.

After the Women's Premier League, Goa Cricket Association came forward to set up a new 'Premier League' for women cricketers. The process of selecting the players for the team was done through an auction, and Shikha Pandey was the highest-paid cricketer in the league.

Maybe in a year or two, we are likely to see an increase in the number of teams in the Women's Premier League. There is likely to be a mega-auction then, and one can expect the salary of the women cricketer to go higher than what we witnessed in the first edition.