Indian women's cricketers to receive prize money for last year's ICC T20 World Cup this week - Reports
The Indian women cricketers will receive their share from the USD 500,000 prize money for last year’s ICC T20 World Cup this week, according to the latest reports.
The development comes after a report in the UK's Telegraph newspaper revealed that the Indian cricket board is yet to hand over the prize money to players who took part in the T20 World Cup last year.
The Indian Women’s team finished as runners-up at the T20 World Cup, which took place in Australia in February-March last year.
A senior BCCI official was quoted as telling PTI:
"The members of the Indian women's cricket team will be getting the share of their prize money by the end of this week. The transactions have been processed and I am expecting that they will receive their share very soon."
On the delay in payment, the official added that the board received the prize money amount late last year. Usually, the processing of payments takes around three to four months.
However, the payments have got delayed due to the impact of COVID-19 as the BCCI headquarters in Mumbai has been shut. A former BCCI office-bearer said:
"It's not just one payment for women. Whether it's the central contract of the men's team, international match fees, domestic fees of men and women, everything is taking a bit of time because of the prevailing situation. Even before the COVID situation worsened, the domestic season would end in March and the complete payments were only cleared by September.
"So, in this case you need to check when did BCCI receive the payments. If they received just after the tournament, then it's a delay but processing does take some time. And to the best of my knowledge, it's the same for both men and women."
India finished runners-up in T20 World Cup last year
India were captained by Harmanpreet Kaur in the T20 World Cup held in Australia last year.
After qualifying for the knockouts, India were lucky to get direct entry to the final as their semi-final encounter against England was washed out. India qualified for the final by virtue of finishing higher in the points table.
In the T20 World Cup final held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), Australia thrashed India by 85 runs.
Batting first, Australia posted 184 for 4 in their 20 overs as openers Alyssa Healy (75 off 39) and Beth Mooney (78 not out off 54) put the Indian attack to the sword. India crumbled to 99 all out in response.