With No Big Win, BCCI Says No To Hike In Annual Retainership For Women

The annual retainership announced for the national women’s team by the BCCI Secretary Devajit Saikia in a way reflects the national governing body’s unhappiness with the team’s performance in multi-nation tournaments. The Indian team lost to New Zealand and Australia in the Twenty20 World Cup held in the UAE last year and these two outcomes eliminated the women in blue team from semi-finals. India had also lost to Sri Lanka in the Asia Cup final in July 2024. In fact, the Indian team has not figured in the final of an ICC Twenty20 World Cup after it lost to Australia by 85 runs in the 2019-20 final played in Melbourne. India had reached the 50-over World Cup final in 2017 when it lost to England by nine runs. Clearly, the BCCI which has been governing women’s cricket for around two decades and has taken steps to bring parity in match fee, allowances and other facilities, wants the team that has experienced players like Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandhana, Deepti Sharma, Jemima Rodrigues, Richa Ghosh, Shafali Verma, Pooja Vastrakar; Renuka Singh Thakur, Radha Yadav to win a big ICC title. The retainership announced for October 2024-September 2025 has three players in Group A (Rs 50 lakh), four in Group B (Rs 30 lakh) and nine players in Group C (Rs 10 lakh). That the team doesn’t play a reasonable number of Tests in comparison with the men’s team is also a reason for a big gap in the annual retainership. Meanwhile the annual retainership for the senior men is keenly awaited. The team has already been given Rs 183 crore for winning the ICC World Twenty 20 and the Champions Trophy.