News India Live, Digital Desk: Indian women’s cricket team has recently created history by winning the World Cup, after which the discussion regarding the earnings and salary of women cricketers has intensified. Taking a historic step towards gender equality, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has equalized the match fees of male and female cricketers, but there is still a big gap in their annual salary. Let us understand this in simple language. Complete equality in match fees. In October 2022, BCCI had implemented “Pay Equity Policy” i.e. equal pay policy. Under this policy, now both men and women cricketers get equal fees for playing international matches. ODI matches: ₹ 6 lakh per match T-20 (T20I) matches: ₹ 3 lakh per match This is a very big and commendable step, because earlier women cricketers used to get much less match fees. There is a big difference in the annual contract (salary). Apart from the match fee, BCCI also gives an annual contract to its key players, which is Called retainership fee. This is where a big difference is seen in the earnings of male and female cricketers. Annual salary of male cricketers: BCCI divides male cricketers into four grades: Grade A: ₹ 5 crore Grade B: ₹ 3 crore Grade C: ₹ 1 crore Annual salary of female cricketers: At the same time, there are only three grades for female cricketers and their salary is also much less than that of men: Grade B: ₹ 30 lakh Grade C: ₹ 10 lakh It is clear that where the top Male cricketers earn Rs 7 crore annually, while the annual earning of top female cricketers is Rs 50 lakh, which is 14 times less. Why is there this difference? There are many reasons behind this difference, which include the commercial earnings from men’s cricket, the number of viewers and the value of broadcasting rights. However, with the advent of the Women’s Premier League (WPL) and major victories like the World Cup, the popularity of women’s cricket is increasing rapidly and this gap can be expected to reduce in the future. In short, the BCCI has taken a historic and commendable step by equalizing the match fees but there is still a long way to go to achieve true parity in terms of annual salaries.