GarlicJam wrote:But they got bullied by the current force in the game. It will probably be a point in many of their careers. Some for good, others maybe not so. India were in charge in the game for none of it at all, they were schooled. A pity, I was really looking forward to a good contest. The game quickly became an anticlimax, even for me.
It can be hardly surprising that they got schooled, in fact had Australia not won this tournament at home, it would have to rank very high on the list of all time worst sporting failures. The difference between Australia and the other countries in terms of facilities and funding renders the rest almost competing in a different sport, such is the gap. Australia have hardly lost a game recently, and to be frank thats the way it should be. This is professionals vs the Amateurs to a large extent. The only team that can almost be mentioned in the same breath, England at rank 2 in the world, got knocked out without facing a ball and didn't get to challenge them (but that result on recent games was as much of a foregone conclusion).
England are the second best team around if rankings are believed, but compare the two nations in terms of available resources; England have 21 full time players, of which only 16 I believe are actually on playing contracts with the rest on rookie development deals. Its believe that the very top players are on about £50,000 a year/90,000AUD, and it gets progressively worse the less important you are. Women in the hundred that arent central contracted will earn £2,500 pounds. The commitment from the ECB as of next year is to raise the professionals by 40, and increase overall funding over the next two years to £10 million per season.
Compare that to the Aussie ladies; grassroots women's cricket alone has a budget of £15-16 million, that dwarfs the ECB's overall financial investment. Then add in the collective bargaining agreement on player wages, the standardization of prize money in Australia between men and women, and you get massive differences. The average domestic/state only player in Australia gets about 65,000AUD/£32-33,000 and there are well over a 100 professionals in Australia. The minimum wage for any player in a domestic competition squad is 27,500 AUD spread over a max 8 squads and every player (base, doesnt include match fees and bonuses). The average wage of an Aussie international is said to be just under 200,000AUD/£101,000 (over double the very top earning English women), and thats before we take into account the 2 million they now split for winning the tournament. Australia have a fully professional A team that is given higher wage contracts that forms the basis of a development side. It has a massive difference when you have a player pool thats professional to fall back on; England have apparently only capped 6 new players since 2014, because they dont have a single professional player to bring into the squad. In the same time, Australia have taken a second squad with of players from their A team into the top team.
And thats comparing the two best scenarios. The India team that made the final still had amateurs in it, and some of the professionals (I think about 3-4 players in that game, aside from Yadav the whole bowling attack) earn band C wages at a maximum of 15,000 USD per year, which is significantly below the minimum a state squad player who doesnt even play is guarnateed. And when you compare the culture of countries and relative economies, think about how much easier it is for a developing teenage women to get coaching or a chance to play in Australia. A women in a low wage Indian family couldnt dedicate to cricket full time, she'd have to work and earn for the family, while its common in the first world that teenagers increasingly live with their parents at ever increasing ages. If you were a 16 year old girl in Sydney who was at the top of the class in terms of quality, you'd have the opportunity to live and work inside the game. I wonder how many Indian ladies fall outside this realm of possibility.
New Zealand are ranked third in the world, and Australia's top 3-4 earners get as much as the whole of the NZ ladies domestic setup, and thats with the currently as yet unstarted agreement that added 4 times more wages. A select handful of women at the elite level of the national team will earn some form of basic parity with Aussie domestic player minimums, but after that it goes dramatically downhill; women in NZ dont get paid match fees or bonuses, and despite pledging to make first team domestic player women "full time", in reality this equates to giving 50 odd players 3250 NZD's per season.... which is dramatically below minimum wage for the country and hardly allows women to dedicate full time to the game while not having a second job.
Seeing Australia win the tournament is a lot like Real Madrid beating a League One side, after the next best lower Premier League team got booted about before they could play them. Australia really should never lose a tournament literally ever.
Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2020 11:24 pm