‘Dil maange more’? Cricketers give a thumbs down to twofold salary hike

Some star players of the Indian cricket team are unimpressed with the twofold salary hike given to them by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) as part of the retainer fee a few days back, if media reports are to be believed.

The players are said to have expressed their anguish with the BCCI, as their doubled annual retainer did not “meet their expectations”.

“The issue had been a concern for a while and that the players have made a concerted effort to address it in the last few months,” ESPNcricinfo said in its report.

Reports suggest that the players want a pie of BCCI’s total revenue, instead of settling for a small percentage of it.

The world’s richest cricketing board’s revenues stood at Rs 1,365.35 crore in the 2015-16 financial year. Of the total income, the board paid a little over 4 per cent or say Rs 56.35 crore to the players as retainer fee. This excluded an amount of Rs 46.31 crore paid to the athletes as “additional payments”.

In the year 2003, for comparison, when the contract system was in introduced, the board paid 26 per cent of its overall revenue to players -- both international and domestic.

Half of the money went to the international players, while 40 per cent of the amount was kept for the payment of the domestic talent. Rest of the money was paid to the junior level players.

The report, if believed, further said that team members did not like the fact that their annual retainer is lower than their counterparts in the English and Australian cricket teams.

Sources suggest that Joe Root and Steven Smith are paid anything between Rs 8 crore to 12 crore in a year.

Last week, BCCI handed over new contracts to 32 cricket players including seven Grade A-contract holders – including Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, Ajinkya Rahane and R Ashwin – who will be paid Rs 2 crore per year.

B- and C-graders will now earn Rs 1 crore and Rs 50 lakh respectively in a year.

The fee amount paid to the players per match was also doubled to Rs 15 lakh from Rs 7 Lakh for a Test, Rs 6 lakh from Rs 4 lakh in ODIs and Rs 3 lakh from Rs 2 lakh in T20Is.

This revision in the pay structure was the first since 2010.