South Africa women cricketers to earn same match fees as men

South Africa’s female cricketers will receive the same match fees as their male counterparts, Cricket South Africa (CSA) confirmed on August 22 in a significant move to boost women’s cricket. The new policy will come into effect from South Africa women’s tour to Pakistan, which starts on September 1. 

With the progressive move, South Africa have joined the likes of New Zealand and India, who have previously introduced pay parity in their cricketing systems while Australia announced a significant pay hike for their women cricketers only earlier this year. Equally notably, the International Cricket Council (ICC), in its Annual Conference in Durban last month, announced equal prize money for men and women at ICC events. 

The morale-boosting alteration from CSA comes on a day when the board also unveiled a six-team domestic league for its professional cricketers, likely to commence from the 2023-24 season. The new provincial scheme is inspired by the current two-tier arrangement involving 16 teams, which are divided into two sets of top six and bottom 10; the latter group of 10 is further split into two five-team subsets and a promotion-relegation system is followed.

In the new structure the top six teams will form the professional league, and as opposed to six members in the previous system, the teams will now be able to contract 11 players, with their pay at par with the top-paid second division male players. The teams will also have a support staff – a head coach, an assistant coach, a physiotherapist and a strength and conditioning coach – with not less than 50% of members being women. 

The six teams for the professional league (which will feature both 50-over and 20-over cricket) are Titans, Lions, Dolphins, Western Province, Free State and Garden Route Badgers. Of these six, as many as four – Titans, Lions, Dolphins, Western Province – have men’s teams in South Africa’s first division.

The expansionary move will have a significant monetary bearing on CSA’s pocket, with an estimated US$ 2.1 million set to be spent over three years, of which US$ 800,000 will be borne by the South African government.