BCCI proposes hike in players' match fees

The Board of Control for Cricket in India appears to have softened its stance on the issue of central contracts for players even before the two sides have sat down for formal or informal negotiations over the details.

Niranjan Shah, the BCCI secretary, also said that the players could sign the contracts after returning from the tour of Bangladesh. "Since there's not enough time before the team's departure, the players can sign the contracts after they return, if they have reservations about them," Shah told The Hindustan Times. "As of now, I don't know whether they have any."

The BCCI's latest proposal stipulates a base match fee of Rs. 1.5 lakh [US$ 3700 approx] per ODI and Rs. 2.5 lakh per Test, up from the Rs 1 lakh [US$ 2500 approx] and Rs 2 lakh, respectively, announced after the last working committee meeting and almost the same as under the previous contracts. Moreover, it has not reduced the win and draw bonuses put forward in the new performance-related payment scheme.

Another significant difference is that the BCCI has widened its net of contracted players, currently offering to sign up 22 players with a possibility of others being offered contracts in the future.

The draft contract sent to the 22 players attending the preparatory camp in Kolkata includes an annual retainer of Rs. 5 lakh, a massive reduction from the last contracts which had three slabs of Rs 50 lakh, Rs 35 lakh and Rs. 20 lakh. The difference is expected to be made up in the win and draw bonuses, which could actually see the players end up a whole lot better off depending on the results they deliver.

The board's initial proposal, made at its working committee meeting in Mumbai on April 7 and retained in the draft, included a win bonus for ODIs of Rs. 3 lakh, home and away, and for Tests Rs. 5 lakh (home) and Rs. 6 lakh (away). Drawn Tests were to add Rs. 3 lakh (home) and Rs. 4 lakh (away) to the coffers of each cricketer.

A hike in the base fee was one of the main points of contention of the players, and it remains to be seen how the board and the players will address the other, which was that the players' pay should be directly linked to gross revenue of the board. Under the old contracts, 26% of the gross revenues of the board was to go directly towards paying the wages of cricketers, both international and domestic.

Recently, though, the BCCI contended that the media rights, which form the vast majority of the board's revenue, would not be considered in totality when calculating this 26 %. They said that, instead, 70% of the media rights money would go into the board's coffers, to be spent towards infrastructural development and other activities, and that only 30 percent would be taken into consideration when calculating the gross revenue for purposes of paying players' wages.

In the new system that is being proposed by the board this has been further diluted with the BCCI saying that the players' pay would in no way be linked to the top-line of the board. The BCCI contended that they were willing to pay even more than 26%, should the players win more matches.