BCCI announces annual player contracts for Indian women's team for 2022-23

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) have announced its annual player retainership for the Indian women's team. The apex cricketing body announced the annual player contracts for the 2022-23 season on Thursday, April 27. 

Indian skipper Harmanpreet Kaur, who recently led Mumbai Indians to the Women's Premier League title in the inaugural edition of the tournament, has retained her place in Grade A, along with star opener Smriti Mandhana, while star all-rounder Deepti Sharma has been promoted to Grade A from Grade B. Veteran Indian spinner Poonam Yadav, who was placed in Grade A last time around, has not been awarded an annual contract by the BCCI as the overall list has been trimmed from 19 to 17 players.

Another big mover in the list is young dashing wicket-keeper batter Richa Ghosh, who has made the jump to Grade B in the newly announced player contracts. Meanwhile, Jemimah Rodrigues, Shafali Varma and Rajeshwari Gayekwad have all retained their Grade B contracts. 

Shikha Pandey and Radha Yadav have been demoted from Grade B to C, while Pooja Vastrakar and Harleen Deol are retained in Grade C. Furthermore, Punam Raut, Shikha Pandey, Taniya Bhatia (all Grade B last time), Mansi Joshi, Priya Punia, and Arundhati Reddy (all Grade C last year) have not been retained.

Annual player contracts in full

Grade A - Harmanpreet Kaur,Smriti Mandhana, Deepti Sharma

Grade B - Renuka Thakur, Jemimah Rodrigues, Shafali Verma, Richa Ghosh, Rajeshwari Gayakwad

Grade C - Meghna Singh, Devika Vaidya, Sabbineni Meghana, Anjali Sarvani, Pooja Vastrakar, Sneh Rana, Radha Yadav, Harleen Deol, Yastika Bhatia

It is worth noting that the BCCI made the commendable move of introducing equal pay for the Indian women's team last year in an attempt to bridge pay parity between female cricketers and their male counterparts. While there has been a massive rise in the match fees for female cricketers, the annual retainer for women's cricketers remains the same. 

Grade A, the highest bracket, takes home INR 50 lakh. Meanwhile, Grade B and Grade C are valued at INR 30 lakh and INR 10 lakh respectively, similar to the previous annual contracts for the women's team.