Beth Mooney , Australia's opening batter, says that women's cricket must "keep pushing the boundaries" when it comes to demanding equal pay for global competitions, as she prepares to return to the Hundred after a year's absence, this time as Manchester Originals' star overseas signing.
Mooney, 30, was Originals' first pick in this year's draft, landing herself a top-tier £50,000 deal, two years after her only previous stint in the competition, for London Spirit in 2022.
Although that sum was a significant increase on the £31,250 that the ECB had established as the top salary bracket for the 2023 draft, it pales in comparison to the men's top-tier salary of £125,000 - let alone the £200,000 that Mooney picked up from Gujarat Giants in the inaugural WPL auction in February 2023 .
And so, while the overall direction of travel is positive, Mooney is not about to buy into any premature self-congratulations about the state of women's cricket in England, even though she acknowledges that the Hundred, with its shared facilities and double-header match-days, is one of the trendsetters in terms of offering equal opportunities for the men's and women's tournaments.
"I'm not sure it's quite equal billing, because the men still get paid more," Mooney told ESPNcricinfo during a KP Snacks event at Cheetham Hill. "But yeah, in terms of the exposure, and the fan base, and the quality of the tournament, it's certainly up there with one of the best going around. It's doing a great job with getting more opportunities for women in this country to play cricket but, as with any women's sport, we're not quite there with equal billing."
Last summer, a wide-ranging report by the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) recommended that English cricket needs to be in a position to offer equal salaries for the Hundred by 2025. The ECB pushed back on that commitment, however, arguing that the commercial and media value of the women's game still falls significantly short of that of the men's.
Mooney agreed that that was still the case. "I don't know if it's quite an achievable goal," she said. "The men obviously bring in a lot of revenue across the world, in terms of the viewership and the broadcast and things like that, so the remuneration piece is always a bit of a tough one.
"But we've got to keep pushing the boundaries a bit," she added. "I think we've got to keep asking the right questions of the ICC, and of each of the different boards of the countries, and make sure that we're still striving to get, first and foremost, more girls in the game, but making sure there's equal opportunities across the board for each country and the females as well."
This time last year, a glut of Australia's top female talent pulled out of the Hundred, partly as a consequence of their windfalls at the WPL - the average spend on the 14 Australians picked up at the auction was more than £100,000 each - but also because their major focus for their off-season had been the Women's Ashes in June and July. This turned into a tussle for the ages, as England squared the multi-format series at 8-8 after four wins out of six in the white-ball legs.
After years of dominance across formats, this was the closest Australia had come to relinquishing the Ashes since 2013-14. However, with the T20 World Cup looming in Bangladesh in October, Mooney was phlegmatic about the challenge to her team's pre-eminence, arguing that it was the natural upshot of the huge growth in popularity of women's cricket globally.
"I don't know if there's really such thing as a gap, to be honest," she said. "I think every team in the world has been getting better, just like we have. We play a lot more cricket now, so there's always going to be times where different teams beat each other. We're just fortunate to have those opportunities to put the game out there, and play competitive cricket."
Either way, she doesn't envisage the sort of situation that has begun to crop up in the men's game, whereby team-mates in franchise tournaments - such as Kuldeep Yadav and Tristan Stubbs at Delhi Capitals - are reluctant to face one another in the nets and give away secrets ahead of international tournaments.
Two of England's key bowlers, Sophie Ecclestone and Lauren Filer, will be lining up alongside Mooney at Manchester, but she's fairly confident that that won't be an issue at practice.
"You'd have to ask them, to be honest, but I don't know if there's really any chat about that in the women's game," she said. "We play so much franchise cricket now, and a lot of us are really good mates. And there really aren't any secrets in the global cricket game anymore, because there's so much vision on everyone. There's nothing that I'm going to do that they're going to be overly surprised about, whether it's in the nets or in a game."
She knows, however, that there will be high expectations surrounding her Hundred return, partly as a consequence of her price tag, but also due to lingering memories of her maiden Hundred appearance in 2022 - 97 not out from 55 balls for London Spirit against Southern Brave, at the time the highest score in the competition's history.
"I mean, I'm here to score runs and help the team win games of cricket, and hopefully give bits of advice to different players along the way," she said. "I certainly don't look at it as anything more or less than that. Like any tournament I play in, whether it's for Australia or back home in the Big Bash, I've got a job to do, and that's that doesn't change, no matter what colour shirt I put on.
"There are certainly high expectations from my point of view. But I also know that cricket is a fickle game, and sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. So, at the end of the day, you can't hang your hat on the number next to your name, because that isn't always a measure of success in my eyes."
KP Snacks, the Official Team Partner of The Hundred, is continuing its initiative to build 100 new community cricket pitches across England and Wales, with 35 brand new pitches going down in 2024. To find out more and search for your nearest pitch, visit www.everyonein.co.uk/pitchfinder
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