Cricket Africa announces central contracts for the next season

CSA (Cricket South Africa) have announced a new list of centrally contracted players for the period between May 1^st, 2018 and April 30^th, 2019. It is a feature initiated by the board that announced its 1^st ever contract in 2013 initially for 6 players and later at present extended to 14 international players.



It announces contract renewals every year and is one among the few boards to do so. Whereas, the ECB (England Cricket Board) renews the contract once in two years.



CSA has stated that this contract for the Proteas has risen after the team's spectacular show in Women’s World Cup. However, the contract amount has not been disclosed since the very beginning.



The contract terms and conditions vary every year but the players are barely benefitted when compared to their male counterparts. We can note that they don’t get paid for the number of international matches they play but it is only the contract amount that they will be rewarded with.



It is a significant move as the players will become financially independent in due course of time, but this contract is far behind what Cricket Australia has announced for all its players in recent time.The need of bringing professionalism into the women’s game is the need at the moment. The domestic match fees still needs a hike to attract many young buddying talents to take up cricket as a career.



The other countries who have announced contracts for its players are – New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Australia and England.



The contracted players announced are given below-



Dané van Niekerk, Ayabonga Khaka, SuneLuus, Marizanne Kapp, Mignon du Preez, Shabnim Ismail, Trisha Chetty, Chloe Tryon, Lizelle Lee, Laura Wolvaardt, Masabata Klaas, Andrie Steyn, Moseline Daniels, Raisibe Ntozakhe