BCCI announces equal pay for men and women teams

India's international women cricketers will be paid the same match fee as the men, its cricket board said Thursday, hailing a "new era of gender equality" in the nation's favourite sport.

Match fees are however separate from annual pay packets -- there will still be enormous differences between what men and their women counterparts earn.

"I'm pleased to announce @BCCI's first step towards tackling discrimination," Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) secretary Jay Shah tweeted.

"We are implementing pay-equity policy for our contracted @BCCIWomen cricketers.

"The match fee for both men and women cricketers will be same as we move into a new era of gender equality in Cricket," Shah said.

Shah said that men and women players will now get 1.5 million rupees ($18,000) for each Test, 600,000 rupees for one-day internationals and 300,000 rupees for T20 internationals.

According to media reports, this is an almost four-fold increase for women for Test matches, a six-fold rise for ODIs and three times more for a T20.

However, India's men will still earn considerably more.

For the 2020-21 season, contracts for the top-graded men such as superstar Virat Kohli were worth around 70 million rupees,  according to previous BCCI announcements.

This is almost 14 times what women get in the highest bracket.

Thursday's announcement came ahead of the reported debut next year of a women's version of the lucrative Indian Premier League (IPL) Twenty20 tournament.

It is tentatively set for March to fit between the next T20 Women's World Cup in South Africa and the start of the next men's IPL season, media reports said earlier this month.