ECB chief executive Richard Gould said Thursday’s upheaval over Hundred’s pay structure for the 2025 season comes in the face of claims from the Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA) that English cricket should not apologize for attracting the world’s best male players. . Offers benefits to overseas players.
Speaking in Hamilton on Friday ahead of the third and final Test against New Zealand, Gould admitted he was taken aback by the PCA’s criticism, saying: “It’s not what I want to hear.” However, he took an unapologetic stance against elevating the top bracket to secure the world’s best talent, claiming that dissenting voices came from “a small number of male players”.
“I don’t accept that,” Gould said when asked whether top salaries were limited almost exclusively to overseas talent. “That band also includes central and potentially contracted (England) players, so you’ve effectively passed that parent band. So I don’t accept that at all.”
“This is a global market. We want the best players, regardless of nationality. If you are the best player, you will get the highest salary,” added Gould. “You just have to look at the IPL and the gap, the spread and if you look back over the last few years we haven’t had as many of the best players in the world as we would have liked in the men’s division. We want more and we apologize for our ambitions to get them here. I won’t.
“Once we get there it becomes a lot easier to spread the money across the squad. It’s a very competitive market for a very small number of players and we’re not going to get pushed around on that. We’re going to compete, we’re going to compete “We need to compete because we need the best players to play in.”
Gould also refuted the PCA’s suggestion that the ECB was responsible for widening the gender pay gap between male and female competitors, citing market forces. Although the upper class of women has increased by 30%, they earn three times less than their male counterparts. Next year the pay difference will rise from £75,000 to £135,000.
In 2022, the Independent Commission for Cricket in Cricket (ICEC) called for gender pay parity in the Hundred by 2025. In its response to the report, the ECB said the time frame was unrealistic, a point Gould reiterated.
“The gap has widened because of market dynamics,” he said. “It was not a recommendation that we said we could implement and we have been very upfront about it. “We have seen a significant increase in wages available for the women’s game.
“I’m really excited that every county club across the country now has a women’s team. You know, in five years’ time we’ll look back and think, ‘How did it take us so long?’ But I think this is a really, really important step for us.”
Relations between the ECB and PCA are at an all-time low due to opposition on the issue of the new, stricter No Object Certificate (NOC) policy.
A group of domestic players have been blindsided by what they see as legislation limiting their revenue opportunities. The people who will suffer from the new rules are those who had red-ball promises written into existing county deals.
No NOCs have been rejected yet, but with 80 handed out to male players so far in 2024, around 50 cricketers have raised the prospect of strike action in the form of a boycott of the centenary in 2025.
Nonetheless, Gould believes the updated measures will “protect the sanctity” of the county’s contracts. He also hoped the boycott would not bear fruit.
“It may have been discussed on the phone with various representatives, but I have not heard anything about it and I sincerely hope not.”
Vithushan Ehantharajah is the Editor-in-Chief of ESPNcricinfo.
