The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has been in news of-late for all the wrong reasons, earlier the social media users slammed the board for the pay disparity between the men and women cricketers as even the lowest annual contract for men cricketers which is Rs. 1 crore is double of the highest annual contract for women cricketers which is Rs. 50 lakh.
While this was not enough for people to get annoyed with the BCCI, it was revealed that the Indian women cricket team which played in the ICC T20 World Cup 2020 hasn’t received its share of prize money till now. The ICC T20 World Cup took place in March 2020 and the Indian cricket team was the runner-up as it got defeated by Australia in the finals. The Indian team got the prize money of $500,000 by the International Cricket Council but even after more than one year has passed, the Indian women cricketers haven’t received their share of prize money. As this news got viral, netizens slammed the BCCI once again and now the board has responded in this matter.
A BCCI official said that the board received the prize money late last year by the ICC and most probably all the players will get their share by the end of the coming week as the transactions have been processed. On being questioned in relation to the huge delay in the payments, the official says that it takes usually 3-4 months in processing the payments of the players across all the age groups and the work has also been affected severely due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The official added that even before COVID-19 hit India, the domestic season used to get over by March but the players used to get payment by September and in the present conditions, the work has slowed down a lot as the Mumbai office of the board had been closed for quite a good amount of time. He also added that as per his knowledge, the payments are processed at the same time whether it is for men cricketers or for women cricketers.
Undoubtedly, the coronavirus outbreak has affected all and sundry in a pretty bad manner and we pray that the world gets over the pandemic soon.