The former Indian Cricketer and captain Sunil Gavaskar has sparked a new debate by touching the “taboo” topic of money in “Professional Sports”. His comment came out soon after India Australia Series where no prize money was awarded to the Triumph team. During the facilitation ceremony, Man of the match Yujvendra Chahal and Man of the Series MS Dhoni was awarded $500 each and the winning trophy was handed over by former Australian stalwart Adam Gilchrist while no cash prize was given to the team and this didn’t go too well with Mr Gavaskar.
“What is USD 500 and it’s a pity that the team has got only a trophy. They (organisers) earn so much money through broadcast rights. Why can’t they give good prize money to the players? After all, players are the sole reason for the sport getting huge money (from sponsors),” Gavaskar said on a TV channel.
Now it goes without saying that despite all the brouhaha that is their money is the major driving factor for all the professional sportsmen in all the games, cricket being no exception. Indian cricketers’ cases in point have always been very well paid and with fancy lifestyles they live every young Indian’s dream. This is the first time any comment has been made over money in the Indian team and rightly so (or wrongly so, some of you may say) it was very important to Object.
“Look at the prize money being given away at the Wimbledon (Championships). It’s phenomenal. The players are key in generating money, so they must be rewarded handsomely” he added.
At the 2018 Wimbledon Championships, even those who exited in the first round pocketed close to Rs 36 Lakh while the singles winners got richer by Rs 21 crore (approx). The money is given in FIFA is also phenomenal (although can’t be compared to cricket as it runs on a different level altogether). Cricket has also being a rewarding game. To put a number to this statement in Cricket world cup 2015 $3975000 were given to the winners, $175000 to the runner up extending till $45000 to the team winning at the group stage and $35000 to the looser at the group stage. This means that if the winner had remained undefeated throughout the group stage of the tournament, they would have won a total of $4,245,000 (winner’s prize plus $45,000 for each group stage win), while a team eliminated in the group stage without any wins would have gotten $35,000.
Gavaskar very rightly pointed out that it is sole because of the players that so much money is being out by sports and its cascading effects leads to a lot of other people making money, us sports content writers being at the lowest level of the food chain. Thus it is very important to reward them.
Now the question arises that why didn’t the Indian cricketers who actually should have got the money objected? Have we made money such a big taboo that players are not asking/objecting for their own emoluments? Money is certainly the reason behind their hard work and there is nothing wrong in asking for what you deserve.
