Former Australia batsman Brad Hodge claimed that players from the now-disbanded Indian Premier League franchise are still owed 35% of their contractual money.
Hodge urged the BCCI to please locate that money and ensure it is finally transferred to the players who played for the Kochi Tuskers Kerala nearly a decade back in IPL.
Alongside Pune Warriors India, Tuskers were one of the two new franchises introduced by the BCCI for IPL 2011, where the traditionally eight-team tournament had additional sides taking part for the first time.
However, Tuskers’ contract was terminated by the Indian board only after one season as they couldn’t pay the due bank guarantee following a dispute among their multiple co-owners.
Tuskers signed Hodge for USD 425,000. He played all IPL 2011 games, with 285 runs at an average of 35.62 and strike-rate of 120.76. He was his team’s third-highest run-getter even as they finished eighth in the points table with just six wins from their 14 matches.
Apart from Hodge, VVS Laxman, Brendon McCullum, Mahela Jayawardene, Ravindra Jadeja, S Sreesanth and RP Singh also played for the Tuskers.
The BCCI terminated Tuskers’ contract after just one season because they failed to pay an annual payment of INR 155.3 crores in 2011. The Kerala franchise was bought at an astonishing sum of INR 1,550 crores.
There were reports in 2012 that Tuskers’ cricketers haven’t received 30-30% of their due payments. As per Hodge’s claim, he is owed a sum of more than USD 127,000.
Hodge brought to light the Tuskers payment issue at a time when the BCCI was under big scrutiny for their failure to provide the Indian women’s team with their prize money earned from the ICC for reaching the last year’s final of the T20 World Cup in Australia.
According to a Telegraph report, even though the board had got the prize money from the ICC last year only, it hadn’t shared the “life-changing” sum to the players who were involved.
The moment the report was out, the Indian board was heavily criticised over social media, having built a bad reputation of showing negligence towards the women’s game in recent times.
However, the BCCI was ultimately forced to react under enormous public pressure and has now reportedly asked the Indian women’s team cricketers to send their invoices for the ICC prize money.
It is understood, each player from the Harmanpreet Kaur-led side that had such an inspirational run till the final at MCG would be getting around 20 lakh rupees after-tax deduction.
It’s a significant sum for the women’s team cricketers, who endure a massive pay gap when compared to the Indian men’s team.
According to the list of annual contracts announced by the BCCI recently, three women players in the Grade A category get a sum of INR 50 lakhs, ten players in Grade B will get INR 30 lakhs and six others in Grade C will be receiving INR 10 lakhs only.
The collective sum that 19 Indian women’s team players will get is INR 5.1 crores, which is significantly lesser than one Grade A+ male player like Virat Kohli alone. It isn’t that those who called out BCCI asked for equal pay, but a better retainership fee will provide greater security among the women’s team players and also send a message across to young aspiring girls in the country.
