BCCI announces annual player contracts for Indian women’s team for 2022-23
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) have announced its annual player retainership for the Indian women’s team. The apex cricketing body announced the annual player contracts for the 2022-23 season on Thursday, April 27.
Indian skipper Harmanpreet Kaur, who recently led Mumbai Indians to the Women’s Premier League title in the inaugural edition of the tournament, has retained her place in Grade A, along with star opener Smriti Mandhana. While star all-rounder Deepti Sharma has been promoted to Grade A from Grade B. Veteran Indian spinner Poonam Yadav, who was placed in Grade A last time around, has not been awarded an annual contract by the BCCI as the overall list has been trimmed from 19 to 17 players.
Another big mover in the list is young dashing wicket-keeper batter Richa Ghosh. She made the jump to Grade B in the newly announced player contracts. Meanwhile, Jemimah Rodrigues, Shafali Varma and Rajeshwari Gayekwad have all retained their Grade B contracts.
The demoted list includes Shikha Pandey and Radha Yadav from Grade B to C. BCCI has retained Pooja Vastrakar and Harleen Deol in Grade C.. Furthermore, Punam Raut, Shikha Pandey, Taniya Bhatia (all Grade B last time), Mansi Joshi, Priya Punia, and Arundhati Reddy (all Grade C last year) have not been retained.
Annual player contracts in full
Grade A – Harmanpreet Kaur,Smriti Mandhana, Deepti Sharma
Grade B – Renuka Thakur, Jemimah Rodrigues, Shafali Verma, Richa Ghosh, Rajeshwari Gayakwad
Grade C – Meghna Singh, Devika Vaidya, Sabbineni Meghana, Anjali Sarvani, Pooja Vastrakar, Sneh Rana, Radha Yadav, Harleen Deol, Yastika Bhatia
The BCCI introduced equal pay for the Indian women’s team last year in an attempt to bridge pay parity between female cricketers and their male counterparts, and it is worth noting this commendable move. While there has been a massive rise in the match fees for female cricketers. The annual retainer for women’s cricketers remains the same.
Grade A, the highest bracket, takes home INR 50 lakh. The previous annual contracts for the women’s team had valued Grade B and Grade C at INR 30 lakh and INR 10 lakh respectively, which are similar values to the current ones.
