On Friday night, 28 members of the US women’s football team, three-time World Cup winners as well as defending champions, filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the United States Soccer Federation (USSF). The team, ranked World No 1 by FIFA, sued the governing body in the US District Court in Los Angeles for equal pay and working conditions to their less successful male counterparts.
Across the Atlantic, Ada Hegerberg, the inaugural winner of the women’s Ballon d’Or in December 2018, has made a decision. She will not play for Norway in this year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup. She stopped playing for the national team in 2017 because of the treatment women’s football received in her country. Even though the Norwegian Football Federation (NFF) signed an agreement for equal pay in 2018, Hegerberg said she will stick to her decision.
Closer home, the question of equal pay dominated the backpages on March 8, 2018, one day after the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced a new contract system for the country’s women’s cricketers — only the second time they had received contracts. Nineteen cricketers would be paid under the new wage structure, with the highest being `50 lakh and the least being `10 lakh. It was a pittance compared to what their male compatriots would be getting (`1 crore to `7 crore for 26 cricketers).
Considering the 2018 theme was #PressForProgress — a push for gender parity worldwide — the 19 cricketers may have felt let down. Less than eight months after reaching the World Cup final, women’s domestic cricketers were told they would be earning less than Ranji reserves. A grim reminder of the prevailing hierarchy. A year on, the prevailing dynamics look set to continue.
When Mithali is asked about equal pay in an Indian context, she is studied in her response. The 36-year-old, like most illustrious women sportspersons who have been crying out for equal pay for years, bats for gender equality. In an interview to this newspaper, she is of the belief that women cricketers should only be paid from the profit or revenue that they generate. She doesn’t want a share of the coffers generated by the men’s team because she played no part in those proceeds. However, the veteran is of the opinion that the modern women’s player’s earnings will see a jump as more and more of their games are being televised on a regular basis. She also calls on the BCCI to be more proactive with respect to setting up a standalone women’s Indian Premier League rather than playing one-off exhibition matches. Excerpts:
How different is women’s cricket from the time you made your debut to today?
For starters, we all are professional cricketers. It is now a career option. Back then it was more to do with us spending from our pocket and our parents sponsoring the tour. The number of international series, I remember, was hardly once in two years or one series in a year. Round the year, we only depended on domestic and whatever invitational matches we played. Of course, travelling was very different. We travelled on trains. The kind of facility that was given... was probably not even equal to a Ranji team. I truly believe that every sport has to go through this. It is a process and women’s cricket has also gone through that. I’m not demeaning men’s cricket but even men’s cricket at some point was going through a similar phase until 1983 happened. Things started to change after that. I’m sure women’s cricket is going through its own journey. It will only get better with time.
This journey you talk about... how has it changed between the late 90s and now?
Now, when you play a decent level, you can earn. Even playing domestic cricket you can earn money, which wasn’t the case earlier. The kind of facility that is given for a domestic side or a state side is far better than what it was. A state team has a physio and a trainer. The support staff is more than just the manager and coach. At one point, we had a coach-cum-manager who was looking after everything. We never had a trainer or physio. Today, the national team has a support staff of more than seven.
Is it easy for girls to pick up cricket as a career option now than, say, 15-20 years ago?
If a 12-year-old girl wants to take up the sport, she will see a handful of girls playing in any camp she wants to enrol in. They will straight away be given an opportunity to play on a turf wicket. Back then, there was hardly any camp which encouraged young (girl) kids.
How did it work for you?
When I started, I was probably the only girl in a boys-only academy. Of course, my brother was playing then. So I started playing as a hobby. I never had the privilege of being in a camp that had girls or which were meant for girls. So, I eventually started playing with boys. That way I was fortunate. But not every story starts like that. You see Jhulan Goswami or Nooshin (Al Khadeer) or Neetu David... they probably didn’t have a fair idea of where to go and join even if they were interested to take the sport up as passion. Also, when we started, we played a lot on matting wickets. Only the privileged lot got to play a session or two on turf.
Women athletes the world over have been campaigning for equal pay for ages. Your stand on this?
Equal pay is definitely a campaign that I would like to associate with. Having said that, I would also believe that we should be paid from the profit or revenue that we generate as women cricketers through our own matches. It can happen only if it is marketed well. So everything is interconnected. If we play a good brand of cricket, the board makes an effort to market it well, televise it, and we have people turning up. Then, there is revenue coming in and then yes... I would expect that to be shared. (But it should) not be on a part of men’s cricket because I am not playing any role and I don’t want a part of their revenue. Having said that, it is very important for the sport to improve in that sense.
Men’s cricket has been able to attract many people to stadia because, over a period of time, they have done very well. Individual players have been promoted well. We are in the beginning stage but I am sure in two-three years, these girls will earn more because matches will be televised on a regular basis and the number of series will increase. There is now a rhythm to it. Earlier, we would play one series at the beginning of the year and one at the end and only the home series would be broadcast. When we went abroad, nobody would know. That is changing... every board makes an effort to televise games. So loyal followers of women’s cricket do know that the team is doing well on New Zealand soil or they have done well while playing in England and so on.
The last time India played a Test was in 2014. Considering women’s Ashes attracted a huge crowd in 2017, do you think there is a chance of India playing a Test soon?
That (women’s Ashes) is a traditional kind of a thing. Same goes with New Zealand and Australia (Rose Bowl series). But we don’t have that kind of culture. As far as Test matches are concerned, I would have loved to have played more matches. Unfortunately, ICC feels to way to promote the sport is through T20s and one-dayers. And I can understand because when we are not attracting half of the stadium for one-dayers and T20s, I wouldn’t think anybody would come to watch a women’s Test match. In that sense, I feel T20 and ODIs are the formats to push the sport upward. From a player’s perspective, that (Test) is the format that every player would love to play because they want to be challenged in every aspect. It challenges every part of a player. We as players are in a dilemma. If you want to promote the sport, these are the formats. If we want to see the challenge of the sport, then that’s the format. Every board has now realised that the way forward are these two formats. That’s why they try and have more of these matches. In T20, we have the World Cup coming up.
India is placed second in the ICC Women’s C’ship. How do you see the road to 2021 World Cup?
It is too early to say anything about 2021. We are still in 2019. But if we continue to do that, yes, it looks far better than in 2017 because we had to play in the World Cup qualifiers. We were somewhere at the bottom of the table. We still have one series left against West Indies. Having said that, we are in the top four now. That was my main aim in 2017... to see India not playing qualifiers. If we are No 2 in the World, it means we have the ability to be in the top four consistently and should be able to beat quality sides on a regular basis.
When do you think a women’s IPL will be free of terms of conditions?
Last time we had one exhibition match. If you start anything new it will take some time for people to get used to it. So, it will take time. I don’t see it happening at least for another two-three years. But we will have to start somewhere. Thinking that we don’t have the pool of players... I understand that viewpoint. But what are we doing to have those pool of players? Maybe we (have to) start with three or four teams or best of three games or best of five games. So then, girls who are playing will come prepared and will be in a better frame of mind. We need to roll the stone at some point. We cannot keep saying that we don’t have players. The way the team is doing right now in one-dayers, we will lose out on making the sport more viable. If the team is doing well, this is the time to make use of that phase.
How different are the three coaches Tushar Arothe, Ramesh Powar and WV Raman?
When Tushar came back again as head coach before the 2017 World Cup it was easy for him because he was the fielding coach in 2009. He knew about women’s cricket and how we operated. I wouldn’t want to talk much about Ramesh. Coming to WV, he has coached at different levels. He is a Test cricketer himself. His coaching style is very different from Tushar. Tushar is someone who really works hard and he would make sure that the girls are on the ground and practice more. He was more quantitative. He would see that we are on the ground for a number of hours, emphasising quantity as well as quality. WV emphasises more on quality. The number of matches we play now is far more than what we used to play when Tushar was around. That could be a reason why. Every coach has a different take when they come to coach a side. It’s not like Tushar did not give the best. Under him, the team did well finishing runners-up at the 2017 World Cup. During that time we won 16 times in 17 games. Under WV, we have won both ODI series against good sides (New Zealand and England).
Your high points and low points as captain?
I have had high points as a captain and as a player because captain and player have gone in parallel. It’s like I have grown as a player and captain simultaneously. The 2005 and 2017 World Cups, both as captain, was a very important journey. In 2005, we realised we were capable of beating big sides. I was challenged a lot in 2014 when I was leading a Test team in England. We had eight debutants, playing a team who had won the Ashes. That was very challenging as a captain and also a player because the team was completely relying on me as a captain to feed them about the format. It was a challenge even as a batswoman because I was playing that format after eight years. When we won that, it gave a lot of confidence to our players. In 2017, too, we had a lot of confidence because of the way grew into the World Cup. We started well but kind of lost our way in the middle before we progressed to the final. That run to the final changed the way people perceived women’s cricket. Those were the three most important phases as captain.
And as a player?
That 214 (then record score in women’s Tests)... was good because that was the time women’s cricket was starting to be noticed in my state. Until then, people did not know about women’s cricket. My dad would drop and pick me up... our family members would be updated on what happened (with respect to my career). After the 214... a lot of people showed interest in women’s cricket. It definitely came to a point where people knew me more by my name than by my face. We were not on television so there were lots of instances where people would talk to me about Mithali without realising that I was Mithali. Now, it’s come to a point where people recognise me by my face. As a player, all these knocks which saw the team through will be memorable because we don’t have many of those... the records. The 2005 WC journey was also special. But I will always be happy that I have been consistent throughout these years.
Lowlights