India players likely to receive T20 World Cup 2020 prize money this week

PTI reported quoting an official from BCCI on Sunday (May 23). Earlier, it was reported in Telegraph.co.uk that the India players were yet to be paid their share of prize money of $500,000 unlike Champions Australia and semi-finalists England, who received their collective prize money within two months after the event finished.

India reached the final of the global tournament played at the MCG in March last year where they lost to hosts Australia by 85 runs. ICC announced a prize money of $1 million for the winners and $500,000 for the runners-up respectively.

“The members of the Indian women's cricket team will be getting the share of their prize money by the end of this week. The transactions have been processed and I am expecting that they will receive their share very soon," a senior board official was quoted as saying. The official also stated that the governing body received the money from ICC late last year.

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According to the report, another former BCCI official said that all the payments including central contracts of men, international and domestic match fees etc were also delayed due to board's office in Mumbai being shut due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"It's not just one payment for women. Whether it's the central contract of the men's team, international match fees, domestic fees of men and women, everything is taking a bit of time because of the prevailing situation," said the former official. "Even before the COVID situation worsened, the domestic season would end in March and the complete payments were only cleared by September.

"So, in this case you need to check when did BCCI receive the payments. If they received just after the tournament, then it's a delay but processing does take some time. And to the best of my knowledge, it's the same for both men and women."

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India currently have 19 centrally contracted players for the 2020-21 period (Starting from October 2020 to September 2021) in three Grades A, B and C, a reduction from 22 players it had during the 2019-20 period (October 2019 to September 2020). The contract for the duration came into place on May 19 this year. From the squad that played the T20 World Cup, 14 players hold the central contracts as of now with batter Veda Krishnamurthy being omitted from the latest list.