Every child is taught, and it is the bedrock of the Bhagavad Gita, that as one sows, so one reaps. In an age of instant gratification, it is but natural that everyone expects to reap very fast – regardless of how they have sowed. Cricketers are no exception, and Jagmohan Dalmiya has put the Board of Control for Cricket in India's (BCCI) money where the cricketers' mouths are by proposing a system of player contracts, and making all match payments performance related. If you win, you get a bonus; if you lose, you get a pay-cut. And the better you perform, the more money you earn. What could be fairer? There are two facets to the new compensation system that the BCCI has worked out for the players. One, a central contract system, in which a pool of 20 players gets annual contracts from the board, and a retainership fee that depends on their value to the team and is decided in advance. And two, a match-fee system which is based on performance, with bonuses for wins and slashed payments for losses.

The contract system has long been overdue, and has been inspired by the Australian system (maybe if we start paying like them, we'll also start playing like them), and South Africa and England have also adopted similar systems. The BCCI has proposed four tiers of contracts, graded A1, A, B and C. A committee set up by the BCCI will pick the 20 best players in the country and grade them according to their value to the team. A1 players (Sachin Tendulkar might be the only one) will get an annual retainer of Rs 75 lakhs, Grade A will get 60 lakhs, Grade B will get 30 lakhs and Grade C will get 15 lakhs.

Central contracts like these will correct certain anomalies in the system, and that is welcome. To start with, all the members of the team, from Sachin Tendulkar to Tinu Yohannan, will not get the same pay. No system promotes merit as much as a meritocracy, and outstanding performers deserve to be rewarded. Also, players will no more be tempted to hide injuries because they are scared to lose out on valuable match fees; and they will not, hopefully, aggravate injuries by playing when they should be resting. More critically, a player who is injured in the course of duty and is laid up for a long time will still get the retainer due to him, and won't be left to fend for himself. Anil Kumble, who was out for a year because of his shoulder injury in late 2000, would have been a beneficiary of this had the system been in place then.

These retainer fees will be supplemented by match fees, and this is where the BCCI has introduced a karmic tinge: it has proposed that for every match India lose, the match fees of all the players get halved, and every time India beat a higher-ranked opponent – as according to the ICC table – these match fees get doubled. Also – correcting another flaw in the system – only members of the playing XI get the full match fee, with the rest of the squad getting half.

This is a welcome move in theory, but the details need to be ironed out. While on the face of it, linking match fees to performance sounds like an excellent way to implement a carrot-and-stick policy, there is really more carrot in it than stick. For one, while the players earlier got only match fees, in the new scheme of things, they will get both the match fee and the retainership, and most players will earn substantially more. Secondly, India will actually get more in terms of a bonus for beating a higher-ranked opponent (almost everybody in Test cricket, as India are No. 8 in the rankings) than they will lose for a defeat. For example: each player currently gets Rs 2.3 lakhs per Test match (and Rs 2 lakhs for a one-dayer). If India win a Test against any of the seven higher-ranked teams, this will double to Rs 4.6 lakhs; if they lose, it will halve to Rs 1.15 lakhs. Thus, India would get exactly the same for losing a five-Test series 2-1 to West Indies as they would for drawing all five Tests, thus implying that the result is par for the course, and satisfactory.

There are plenty of other grey areas that need to be properly defined and rationalised in the proposed system. But if God is in the details, the BCCI is being appropriately religious by not announcing anything in a hurry, and by indicating its desire to iron out the small print in consultation with the players. The board has shown the will; will Indian cricket be rewarded?

Amit Varma is assistant editor of Wisden Asia Cricket and Wisden.com India Subscribe to Wisden Asia Cricket
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