In October 2016 the NSW Breakers made history when they became the first fully professional women’s domestic team in Australia. There were professional players in women’s sports around the country, but this deal marked the first time an entire team was earning the national minimum wage of $35,000 a year.
Over the following six and a half years, the landscape of women’s sport has shifted considerably. The latest Super Netball pay deal lifted the minimum wage to $43,000, while the AFLW last year implemented a 94% pay rise for its lowest paid players – with the minimum wage increasing from $20,239 to $39,184.
Australian cricket has continued to set the standard for women at an international level, but this week’s announcement of momentous jumps in wages for women’s domestic players has echoes of the significance of the 2016 Breakers deal. For the first time, it provides a viable way for Australian women to make a financially successful career purely as a domestic team sport athlete.
It is timely for cricket as international pressures begin to rise. The success of the first season of the Women’s Premier League in India is the most obvious of these – in a tournament that lasted a little over three weeks, Australia all-rounder Ash Gardner walked away with $558,000 for her time. These opportunities for women to earn serious money internationally will continue to grow. The Hundred is proving more successful than most imagined and the FairBreak Invitational – currently taking place in Hong Kong – is another short-form tournament that offers considerable earning potential and the opportunity for women to contribute to growing the game across non-traditional cricketing nations.
While the Women’s Big Bash League has long been considered the pinnacle domestic competition for women, the proliferation of these short tournaments has put pressure on that status. Cricketers Hannah Darlington and Maitlan Brown, in their podcast She’s in the Game, have highlighted some of the issues around the competition losing its lustre in recent years – especially in comparison to these newer tournaments. In particular, the issue of WBBL match scheduling – where a team may travel from Sydney to Melbourne to play a team from Adelaide at a distant suburban ground in the middle of a weekday – does little to create the kind of atmosphere a tournament like The Hundred can boast.
The increase in player wages in itself is important to the WBBL staying relevant in an increasingly competitive market – it will allow the competition to continue to attract the best Australian and international talent. But the increased investment may also serve as an impetus to reinvigorate the league itself. When you are investing a minimum of $54,000 in each player, the folly of putting on a match with an atmosphere more akin to park cricket than a professional competition naturally becomes more evident. Scheduling more home matches, increased marketing of the league and a more mature match-day experience – all factors that are standard in the men’s BBL – will go a long way to moving the competition forward in line with these overseas competitors.
While these international pressures are significant, perhaps equally so is the need to create a viable and desirable career path as a domestic women’s cricketer. As the WBBL has flourished, so too has the Australian women’s team. Their trophy cabinet is crammed full and the team has become an unstoppable force in world cricket. And yet, the WBBL continues to unearth talented players season after season. For every place that becomes available in the Australian team, there are at least four or five players who could step in and become a match winner. There is simply no room at that level for all the players who have the ability to excel internationally. For the Australian team, it is an excellent problem to have. But for those players hovering at the borders, it cannot be easy to continue to put in the effort and hope that – against all odds – their time will come.
Representing Australia remains the ultimate dream and its significance will never be diminished, but this deal offers an alternate pathway. One where women can have a long, distinguished domestic career that offers financial security, and where they can become a household name while gaining qualifications and investments that will set them up for life after sport. It is not just the money that makes this deal so significant – it is what the investment represents. It is a belief in the future of the women’s game and its appeal in its own right, and an understanding that domestic cricket isn’t simply a talent pipeline for the Australian team, but a force to be reckoned with in its own right. It is also an acknowledgement that the women who provide the lifeblood of cricket are valuable and crucial to the sport.
