Much as they did for the first men’s IPL auction 15 years ago, the numbers for the sale of women players to the five privately owned teams for the inaugural women’s edition have reshaped the cricket economy in a matter of hours.
But in terms of women’s sport the impact is all the greater: because the scale of the Women’s Indian Premier League (WPL), payments for players outstrips plenty that has gone before them, anywhere and in any other league.
Smriti Mandhana ($595,000), Ash Gardner ($560,000) and Nat Sciver-Brunt ($560,000), the top three players in the auction by asking price, are now among the best paid female athletes in the world.
Ash Gardner and her teammates were left open-mouthed by the money flowing from the WPL auction.Credit:Getty
Gardner’s fellow Australians Ellyse Perry ($300,000), Beth Mooney ($350,000), and Tahlia McGrath ($250,000) are not far behind them, particularly when Cricket Australia, WBBL and other overseas deals are factored in.
For all the buzz around the huge money raked in by the likes of Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Pat Cummins and this year Cameron Green – all in the $3 million range – at past IPL auctions, those numbers did not really change things in a global sense.
The world’s best remunerated men’s athletes (think Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar) rake in as much as $US70 million a year from their clubs. If that sort of cash is ever to be collected by cricketers, it is still a fair way off.
Beth Mooney.Credit:Getty Images
What’s different about the WPL, however, is that Mandhana, Gardner and Sciver-Brunt, among others, are now being paid about as well as anyone in any team sport. Better than Sam Kerr’s Chelsea contract, the best of the WNBA, or the NWSL.
In terms of earnings for their feats on the field, in fact, only the best golfers and tennis exponents have the possibility of gaining more – albeit in individual sports where prizemoney varies enormously depending on performance.
There is another significant factor at play around the WPL.
By shining such a bright light upon the best female cricketers and opening them up to endorsement deals in India, by far cricket’s biggest market, the auction will play its part in allowing women to become as ubiquitous in a commercial sense as their male counterparts.
Something notable when comparing the world’s best paid male and female athletes is how, in most cases, the off-field endorsement cash for the likes of Messi, LeBron James, or Steph Curry sits at around parity with their contracts for playing.
In contrast, Naomi Osaka, Serena Williams and others at the top of the women’s sporting earnings tree gain far, far more from their sponsorships and partnerships than they do through money earned strictly from playing.
The desire for brands to align with high-profile, highly successful female athletes is growing all the time, but in cricket’s case the generation of greater profile for its best women is going to go to a whole other level as a result of the WPL’s belated entry to the schedule.
There were, as ever at an auction, some prices that surprised at the low end also. Alyssa Healy, dominator of World Cup finals in recent years, was picked up for about $120,000, signalling a subtle shift towards younger players. Meg Lanning’s price of about $190,000 was excellent for a player only just back from sabbatical, but somewhere in the middle.
As significant as the money for cricket is how the WPL puts a definitive stamp on Twenty20 as the format where the women’s game is destined to keep building.
Where the men’s game has always had to co-exist between three formats, in particular the contrast between Test matches and the shortest form, women’s cricket is now tearing at full speed towards a Twenty20 future.
Belinda Clark, whose statue was unveiled at the SCG Test earlier this year in recognition of her footprint as a player, captain and administrator, has long believed that the women’s game needed to lead with Twenty20 because the “constraints of the format” would push players to be aggressive.
Mooney, who won the Belinda Clark Trophy at the Australian cricket awards last month, noted how that same mindset, championed by the former national women’s coach Matthew Mott, had been critical to how the likes of Gardner and McGrath shaped their games.
“I think Motty’s legacy, hopefully, will live on for a long while. He gave us a platform to be ourselves and play the game and create how we wanted to play with our own spin on it, so to speak,” Mooney had said after accepting her garland.
“I think someone like Ash Gardner could have absolutely been lost to the game if she hadn’t had someone like Motty nurturing her and showing her that we needed a skill set to be able to have success.
“And you know, I could name a number of other players, Tahlia McGrath only came back onto the scene about 18 months ago and she’s up there tonight, winning awards and being one of the frontrunners for this award as well. So I think he’s just given us the platform to do this and foremost, but also to play the game with our own little spin on it.”
With power, all-round ability and impressive composure, Gardner and McGrath are now at the forefront of a world-leading change for women’s sport.
