Eighteen ECB contracts are set to be on offer, ranging from £90,000 to £130,000, alongside multi-year deals in a historic move towards gender equality in cricket. England’s female cricketers are set to receive a more than 30% pay rise, with multi-year contracts on offer for the first two players this October. Contracts are expected to vary based on players' experience and seniority.
This comes as a progressive step towards closing the gender pay gap after multi-year deals were offered to some of England’s male players. With all fifteen members of Heather Knight’s squad anticipating new contracts, the new pay rise provides an injection of enthusiasm as the team prepares to participate in the Women’s ICC T20 World Cup, which started October 3rd. Predicted to make the semi-finals, England beat Bangladesh by twenty-one runs in their opening game in Sharjah, after the tournament was moved to Dubai and Sharjah from Bangladesh due to ongoing civil unrest.
Knight’s team will then confront the likes of South Africa and Scotland in the coming weeks. The England and Wales Cricket Board will award around eighteen full-time deals in a bid to provide greater job security for players following a report from the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC), which was critical of the ECB stating that “women receive an embarrassingly small amount compared to men”. Beth Barrett-Wild, director of the women’s professional game, said that the ECB is committed to making the women’s game an “enticing” profession rather than just being “viable”, in order to achieve greater parity with men's sports.
After a thrilling Ashes performance last summer, the female team received match fee parity with men after the women’s series received record crowds and increased viewing figures double those of 2019. According to last year’s ECB gender report, the average gender pay gap was 21% in 2023, compared with 17% in 2022. The ECB is expected to provide further comments next month, including a potential equalisation of salaries by 2028.
In addition to the pay rise, the ECB has pledged an extra £5m-a-year investment into the women’s domestic game from 2025, with an additional £1m having been allocated to women’s salaries in the Hundred last year. The top salary is now £50,000 compared to £15,000 when the competition started in 2021.