Hello and welcome to Stumped, your intercontinental hit of news,
features and debate from the quirky world of cricket. I'm Alison Mitchell and I'm in
my apartment in Mount Maunganui, which is in the north of the North Island of New Zealand. I'm here
for England men's two-match Test series, which they've just started against the Blackcaps.
I'm in Mount Maunganui, which is on the peninsula in the north of the North Island and not too far
away from the areas which have been badly affected by Cyclone Gabrielle. It seems remarkable that Mount
Maunganui has escaped any real damage here and hence why the Test match is going on,
but there are really parts of New Zealand that are going to feel these effects for some time to come.
We've certainly seen a fast-paced opening day of this Test match that is for sure.
Yes Ali, Jim Maxwell here in Sydney and I've been following the first day with England again ramping, rollicking
their way through to a declaration; four hours of batting and then two hours of bowling.
Should be a fun game. Here in Australia, well we're trying to sort of think about hopefully
an improvement in the second Test for Australia against India in Delhi. That might be wishful
thinking, but all eyes were diverted this week to the Women's Premier League auction in India,
which has made some amateur cricketers, as they've been for a long while, a little bit
wealthier it seems as a result of what occurred at that, so good luck to all of them.
Well, isn't it remarkable that even here in India, women's cricket and all the goings on in the
WPL almost overshadowed the India Australia series. It's impossible do that though, so we'll see how
the Test match goes. This is Charu Sharma for All India Radio back in Bangalore after a wonderful,
happy trip to Rajasthan to assist my school in revamping and renewing and re-jigging their sports
programme - the Mayo College, Ajmer - but glad to be back and of course it's all women now.
It's either the T20 World Cup news where India have started out very well and of course the WPL, where
some wonderful fortunes are finally being made; it's about time. Well you both mentioned the WPL
and you're right, it has dominated hasn't it? It was taking headlines, even Eoin Morgan announcing
his retirement from all forms of cricket was overlooked and the WPL was leading the headlines
above that. That was probably an announcement that was going to be coming sooner or later. So,
we will delve more into that first ever auction, because it felt like a really momentous moment not
just for women's cricket, but women's sports overall. The auction took place in Mumbai and
there really was some life changing amounts of money spent on some of the game's top stars. The
first ever pick was India's Smriti Mandhana, the opener - she went to Royal Challengers Bangalore
for US$412,000 and that was the biggest deal of the day. Some of the other top buys? We saw
India's Deepti Sharma and Jemimah Rodrigues go for big amounts, and Australia's Ash Gardner and
England's Nat Sciver-Brunt were the two biggest overseas picks. So Jim, Charu alluded to the fact
that the auction did make big headlines in both Australia and of course are in India. So Charu,
let's come to you first, because it's India's tournament. I mean can you put into I guess
a sense of perspective as to the significance of this for women's sport in India?
Well, you mentioned it's India's tournament, and technically it is, but I think it is the tournament for women
in the whole world right now with the kind of figures being bandied about. I mean it's
just finally happened because that was the key, we've been talking about the event happening for
years here on Stumped, and the one thing that we thought might be holding it back was the lack of
depth in the home country in India. Judging from the interest of... well the commercial interest and
the media interest, this is just fabulous. I think the timing is just right because the women have
started doing really well in international cricket - there's lots of news as well as surrounding the
women even when they're not playing. The amounts might seem outstanding at this point of time, but
I really think it's their due and with the kind of player purse that every team has, these were along
expected lines. So, terrific for all the women who were the top bids, and even more important in the
long-term sense that so many other young Indians now are a part of the WPL, and this is where the
depth will now start arising in India, and that's just the best news from the Indian standpoint. I
hope the rest of the world is not disappointed with some of the figures, because some have got
their due and others, strangely and this is how auctions work and I've said that before, they're
like wild untamed animals. Sometimes when you come up a little late, people don't have the budget, so
it's just one of those things. But congratulations to everybody who now is a part of the WPL.
Yeah, Jim, the Australians really took a huge step forward leading the way with the women's
Big Bash League, but that made a lot of players a lot of depth in players professional in Australia,
but this takes it to another level in terms of the money that's available.
Yeah, I suppose it's going to put the squeeze on things like The Hundred with this kind of bidding going on, and
we shouldn't overlook the fact that it's appalling discrimination that there are no
Pakistanis involved - just like the men's IPL. I think that's very unfair, and something needs
to be done about that, and Charu or anyone can tell you about the political reasons for this,
even though the Pakistanis were there for the first year of the men's IPL but haven't been
there since and the women are not there at all. It might be a question to Charu
if there were Pakistani players put up for auction, how many of them do you reckon would
have qualified, given that there were over 400 players initially put up for auction?
Well, the fact is that the T20 World Cup is going on right now and although India beat Pakistan in
a bit of a thriller, at least the bidding public in India - the team owners - would be well aware
of the strength of at least half a dozen of the top Pakistan players. Were they to be a part of
the auction, I have no doubt at least six or seven would have been picked, which is at least one per
team or so, that's my guess. Of course, we'll never know now this point of time, you make a good
point about the fact that they're missing and it's a shame, but I do hope that relations improve soon
enough for both men and women and that it can be part of cricket happening around the world every
single country. There is the matter of the World Cup later on and there's some noise about the
men's Pakistan team perhaps not coming to India and so and so forth, but that's all in the future.
Yeah, one feels sorry for all the hard-working women in Pakistan to not have the opportunity
to not only play in this kind of a very salient league, but also of course, make a reasonable livelihood.
Yeah, that's very much a political decision that India has made and is sticking with,
isn't it? The wealth has felt huge hasn't it? The tournament and as you said Charu, a tournament
for the world. But you're quite right Jim, when you look at actually the number of players who
put themselves up for the auction versus the number that actually get picked, and I'm sure
it is going to be a tournament that will expand in future as we've seen the men's IPL add teams.
At the moment, it's quite concentrated number of players who will be picked, which still leaves
not a lot of players within a team picking up these bigger sums of money. It's not quite
the game changer across the board yet, but it's a game change in terms of opportunity.
The opportunity is there for all those players who can enter the auction to put themselves forward,
so it's a huge thing to aspire to. It is, but it becomes a bit of 'we're gonna take that one,
so that means we might be able to go for this one,' and that's why you get situations at the moment
anyway where people like Alana King miss out completely and then she's not the only one. But
that's often the process, as it has been in the men's IPL, where some players miss out completely
and you shake your head and say how did that come about? Charu might be more aware of the
ins and outs of the process that means all of a sudden someone's stranded because the selectors,
as it were, have decided to bid for someone else and they've bid so much money they can't afford to go there.
It is like a wild, untamed animal, an auction. It depends so much on luck as well.
You know, when do you come up for auction and sometimes people, especially in the early parts,
overspend and some really good players therefore are well, the bidding kind of his insipid. This
is just how auctions go. You also mentioned that 409 players and only a few got taken, so it's the
nature of sport, Alison. It's a very steep pyramid and only the top few real end up making a very
decent livelihood, and the rest don't. So had there been 10,000 people who entered their name
in the auction, you still have the same number of players taken into the teams because of the team
size, so that's just one of those things. I don't know how much expansion can happen and how soon, but it will
happen you're right, and more players will get the opportunity. Jim, you mentioned Alana
King not being picked up and she was certainly a surprise for me, although sometimes leg spinners
haven't always been a favoured pick in T20. But they can be so valuable, and she's been
an excellent player. Were there anymore surprises for you out of the auction - either the picks or
the prices, or others who were left out? Well, I notice in our background briefing for the show,
there's a name there that stands out to me every time I watch her play for South Africa,
Laura Wolvaardt. I don't know how anyone could leave her out. She's one of the best players
in women's cricket by a longshot, and it was interesting to see also in the notes that Dane van
Niekerk was picked up for US$37,000 so good luck to her because she's suffered a bit of humiliation
and embarrassment on that selection criteria that forced her of the South African team. There are a
number of others there who missed out. I think the interesting thing you've alluded to in the
briefing is the comparative pay rate for women's cricketers compared to stars in other women's
sports and that's worth looking at Ali. Well for a lot of players who did get picked up in the auction
they're suddenly going to be in possession of a bigger pay slip than any of them could ever have
imagined, provided of course they can fulfil their contracts and don't get injured. But if you look
at say Ash Gardner and Nat Sciver-Brunt, they're going to be earning 10 times more than the highest
salary in the women's Hundered, the ECB tournament just to put that in some perspective. They're also
going to earn more in one month than Australian footballer or soccer player Sam Kerr pockets in a
whole season with Chelsea, and more than the WNBA's top earner Jackie Young. So, it is a watershed
moment for the sport, albeit concentrated amongst a relatively small number of players
as we mentioned when you're considering the global game. But you do need to look after your finances,
so let's speak to Ben Gibson who is director of financial planning at UK based wealth management
business, Evelyn. Ben, welcome to Stumped. Just tell us first of all a little bit more about what you do specifically.
Nice to meet you, Alison. What we do at Evelyn is we help individuals from
all walks of life plan for their financial future. Now what I do is specialise in sports
and entertainment work and work with sports and entertainment clients. Naturally, their careers
are extremely uncertain and potentially very, very short lived. What we do is help these individuals
get set for life beyond sport, so that could be from a significantly younger age than the
likes of us in the room at the moment. Yeah, and if we look at some of the earners in the WPL,
some of them are maybe only 18 years of age, but also across many different countries as well. What
should players be thinking about if they are suddenly in receipt of big pay days such as this?
I imagine that approach would be quite different depending on the country you come from, and indeed your background?
Exactly yeah. So when we're thinking about different countries of residence,
that would really be focused around the level of taxation that they pay and how much they end up
with in their back pocket. But the type of work that we look to do with individuals like this,
is somebody who's 18 or 19, you're trying to get them to think about how short their career may
be even if they are extremely successful. So a lot of these individuals may be retiring from
sport at age 35, and their period of earnings is maybe 15-20 years at a push. What you're
trying to do in an ideal world is get them set up for potentially 60-years worth of retirement,
which is extremely hard to achieve. But first and foremost, it's great to see the additional level
of money now coming into female sport. I think it's something that we have seen historically in
the men's game of cricket, but in the female side as you said it's great to see that that
level of change. Historically we're not too far away from the past where individuals were working
alongside playing sport, and now they're doing it at a professional level so it allows them to then
focus more energy and focus more time to the game that they love but also, they can start thinking
about can they plan for a career beyond sport if they need to. Jim Maxwell here Ben in Sydney.
Sounds like it's a bit like winning the lottery or something, so what do the players need to be wary
of so that they don t have all this income scammed from them? I think the bigger picture is trying
to get them to understand the value of that money, and how although one year might be great how there
is no guarantees around that being paid out to them for the rest of their careers. We don't know
what will happen in terms of performance, and that's the biggest hurdle I think you have to
get over when working with athletes is that they expect this money to last forever. If you spend it
or you spend a big chunk of it very quickly, it won't last very long so the type of work
that we do is very educational really. So yes, we will help them position their money in the most I
suppose secure way that fits their circumstances, but ultimately we're trying to give them a pot of
money that they can call upon when they're old enough to sort of think about life beyond sport.
Do you think it's different in some major way for men and women athletes? And do you also sense,
generally speaking, a great reluctance for athletes to go in for these well-crafted
plans rather than 'leave me alone'? I think it's generally at an individual level. So if I think
about men's football as an example, men's football has historically had a really bad reputation
around individuals being extremely flash with their money. Now the type of individuals that
we work with generally aren't like that. They're generally not like that and what I can't give you
the answer to, is whether that's because they work with us or whether they're naturally down to earth
individuals. I think it's only the bad examples that you hear in the media of people being very
flash and spending money on cars and lifestyles that maybe give the whole industry a bad
reputation. Now I think it's possibly too early to say with regards to female and male athletes,
and whether they would act differently with the same amount of money, but as I've said I think
the starting point is engagement and working with whether it's managers, agents, lawyers, accountants
who work with these individuals to really get them set up on the right foot. From a geography point
of view, it doesn't really matter where they're based, I think it's more about understanding what
their long-term aspirations are for that money. We used an example I think in case recently of would
an individual who's 19 rather earn a £1million in one year, or £100,000 for ten years?
That's ultimately what we're trying to do, is tap into the psychology of that individual.
There's no right or wrong answer, everybody wants different things, and some people in particular
are looking for security, and that's the type of individuals who reaches out to us really.
Can we all earn 1million a year for 20 years please? That would be quite handy!
Bring it on!
Ben, it's really good to get your insights. Thank you so much for joining us on Stumped,
and it certainly is going to be a changing landscape for
women in sports but women cricketers in particular. Thanks for being with us.
Well that is all we've got time for on this week's Stumped, so my thanks to Jim Maxwell, Charu Sharma
and of course all of you for listening. We'll see you again same time next week. Bye for now.