Rosa Simkin (@rosatalksball) – 25/09/24
The minimum starting salary across the men’s and women’s domestic game will be equalised from 2025.
The new regulations will apply at both a “rookie” level, which tends to be applied to players signing their first professional contracts, which doesn’t currently apply in the women’s game with the current men’s minimum set at £20,000 and at “Senior Pro” level with the current men’s minimum set at around £28,000.
In the current structure, contracts are predominantly ECB funded with the ECB injecting £250,000 into each of the eight Regional sides, with contracts at an average of £25,000. However, a handful of counties have pushed additional funding towards their Women’s counties, a prime example coming from Lancashire who through assistance of Hilton fund an additional handful of contracts and made Thunder one of the first and only sides to pay all of their players a living wage during training hours.
From 2025 the eight Tier One counties will be required to invest a minimum of £500,000 into their squad, with a cap of £800,000 applied in order to ensure an equal playing field. Which compares to a minimum of around £1.5 million in the men’s game. They will also be required to have a minimum squad size of 15 players, although it can be more as long as it falls under the £800,000 banner.
“Equalising starting salaries across our men’s and women’s professional domestic game is another positive step forward for women’s cricket in England and Wales. The changes we’ve made to the structure of women’s domestic cricket across the last nine months have been about producing a sustainable and viable product that’s attractive off the pitch, as well as being quality on it. As part of this, it’s important that our players are remunerated appropriately, and that cricket is seen not just as a viable career option for women, but an enticing one.” – Beth Barrett-Wild, ECB Director of Women’s Professional Game
The move shows the ECB continuing to respond to a damning ICEC report, exposing the extreme diversity and inclusion failures throughout the English game and their reccomendations surrounding equal pay, following the equalising of International match fees and the search for private investment in The Hundred, which presumably would help continue the levelling up of the women’s contracts with the men’s contracts frozen in place as it stands; with the lowest women’s currently set at £8,000 and maximum £50,000 in comparison to the £30,000 and £125,000 awarded to their male counterparts.
The move follows the recent announcement that the T20 and 50-Over tournaments will become aligned, with the eight Tier One counties playing in the Women’s Vitality Blast & Metro Bank One Day Cup League One and the ten Tier Two counties playing in League 2 of those respective competitions.
The Kia Oval is set to host the inaugral Women’s Vitality Blast Finals Day on Sunday 27th of July, which will be broadcasted live on Sky Sports and the Utilita Bowl will host the innaugral Women’s Metro Bank One Day Cup Final on Sunday 21st September.
“Working with the ECB and the professional game, we are really pleased to see equalised minimum salaries across the men’s and women’s domestic game from 2025.This is a big step towards reaching parity and a journey that the PCA is fully committed to achieving, but there is still further work to do. With the women’s teams under the umbrella of the First-Class Counties, the PCA will continue to lobby for parity across all areas of the professional game.” – Emma Reid, PCA Director of Player Rights and Women’s Cricket
The women’s domestic game is facing a complete revamp from 2025, with the eight Regional sides being handed back to the Counties. Eight will become nine in 2026 with the addition of Yorkshire and ten in 2027 with the addition of Glamorgan with the ECB hoping for twelve professional units by 2029. The Tier One status was awarded via a bidding structure, with only Worcestershire and Derbyshire opting out of the process.
The Tier One line-up for 2025 consists of: Durham, Essex, Hampshire, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire (The Blaze), Somerset, Surrey and Warwickshire
With Tier Two including: Derbyshire, Glamorgan*, Gloucestershire, Kent, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Middlesex, Sussex, Worcestershire & Yorkshire**
*Tier One Status from 2027
**Tier One Status from 2026
The move also marks the continued accelerated development of the women’s professional game in England, following the revamp of the Regional structure for the 2020 season, with the initial five pros in 2021 becoming a fully contracted squad of 15 for 2025.
“Increasingly, every decision we take is about making cricket as attractive a sport for young girls as it is for boys. We know we still have a lot of work to do in this space. But we are moving at pace, and the news today represents another significant building block in the journey to gender equity in the game.” – Beth Barrett-Wild, ECB Director of Women’s Professional Game
