On March 11 and 12, the first player auctions in the history of the Hundred took place at Piccadilly Lights.
The investment of IPL owners into the league this year led to a doubling of the salary cap per team on the women’s side, from £436,500 to £880,000. The men’s competition saw a 45 per cent rise from £1.4 million to £2.05 million.
Most of the attention at the auction, naturally, went to the top earners – Dani Gibson became the most expensive women’s domestic player at £190,000, while Sophie Devine and Beth Mooney earned contracts worth £210,000 each.
In absolute terms, player wages skyrocketed. Of the 94 women’s cricketers who were also drafted in 2025, 78 received a higher payment than last year, led by Devine, Mooney, Gibson and Issy Wong. All of them earned £50,000 or less last year, and their wages increased by over £100,000 each. One player (Kate Cross) received the same amount, and 15 players were paid less than last season.
The shift from a draft system to an auction system was pointed out by many as being rather more volatile to the players, including Sam Billings, a three-time Hundred-winning skipper no less.
Drafts vs auctions and the rise in pay disparity
The Hundred's draft system saw the ECB carve out salary bands, into which teams selected players one by one. For example, the women’s Hundred salary bands in 2025 were £10,000, £12,500, £16,000, £20,000, £36,000, £50,000 and £65,000. Teams could select two players in each salary band except for the lowest one, where three were allowed. There was also a bonus of £7,500 going to the club captain.
The auction allows that nebulous concept of “market forces” to come into the picture, i.e. how many teams want a particular player, how much money each one has in their purse, when the player's name is called, and more. In an open bidding process, the only ‘fixed’ aspect is the base price of each player, i.e. the point from which the bidding starts.
In the women’s Hundred for 2026, players set their base price at one of four values; £50,000, £37,500, £27,500 or £15,000.
Teams would start bidding for players at these values, and depending on how “in demand” the player was, their salary would go up to varying extents.
In his feedback, Billings raised the point of disparity between the highest-paid and lowest-paid players. This appears more evident on the women's side of the Hundred this year, given the 100 per cent rise in the overall salary pot, compared to a 45 per cent rise for the men.
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That being said, in the latest draft system, the highest-paid player in the men’s and women’s Hundred each earned about 6.5x that of the lowest-paid player (without accounting for the captain’s bonus). After the women’s auction on Wednesday, the highest-paid player earned 14x that of the lowest-paid. In the men’s auction, the most expensive player took home 12.5x that of the lowest-paid; including retentions and direct signings, the highest-paid player earned 15x more than the lowest-paid. In one sense, the pay disparity has effectively doubled.
[In the IPL, the biggest franchise league in the sport, this difference is astronomically large. At the latest mega-auction, ahead of IPL 2025, the lowest-paid player earned 0.25 per cent of the team's purse, while the highest earner got 22.5 per cent – 90(!) times more.]
The difference becomes more stark when looking at a more accurate metric than wages in their absolute form. Measuring the percentage of a team’s salary cap paid to each player paints quite a different picture to the supposed windfall.
In the set of 94 women’s players mentioned earlier, only 34 received a higher percentage of their team’s salary cap, compared to 2025, i.e. a “bigger piece of the pie”. The other 60 saw a decrease.
Biggest winners in the women's Hundred - measured by % of team's salary cap
| Player | 2025 | 2026 | Change |
| Sophie Devine | 8.25% | 23.86% | +15.62 |
| Beth Mooney | 11.45% | 23.86% | +12.41 |
| Issy Wong | 3.67% | 14.77% | +11.11 |
| Dani Gibson | 11.45% | 21.59% | +10.14 |
| Tilly Corteen-Coleman | 2.86% | 11.93% | +9.07 |
| Freya Kemp | 8.25% | 13.64% | +5.39 |
| Cassidy McCarthy | 2.29% | 7.39% | +5.10 |
| Charis Pavely | 4.58% | 9.66% | +5.08 |
| Lauren Bell | 11.45% | 15.91% | +4.45 |
Eight players saw their share of the salary cap increase by at least five percent. Fifteen saw theirs decrease by at least that much.
The following chart shows what percentage of a team’s salary cap was earned by the maximum, median and minimum wage earners in each season of the Hundred.
The introduction of the auction has seen the lowest earner for both men and women dip below two percent of the pie for the first time, while the highest earner has skyrocketed, with the largest year-on-year rise by far. Even the median women's player now gets slightly less.
The mechanism of the auction certainly plays a part in this – but observe the trend of the earlier years. The gap has been widening steadily; shares of the top earners have been on the rise, and the lower earners on the slide, even with the draft system remaining in place.
Perhaps what this indicates, more than anything else, is not the difference between a draft and an auction, but the aims of those in charge in either case.
Increased disparity is not solely down to the auction vs draft systems
From 2023 to 2024 (both under a draft system), the overall spend on women's player salaries rose by 40 per cent. But this rise was not uniform across the seven salary bands. The top three were increased by 60 per cent each, and the other four by less than 20 per cent.
It was a similar story from 2024 to 2025 as well. For the women, the overall rise was 23 per cent, implemented as the top two bands increasing by 25 and 30 per cent respectively. One change here was that the lowest band went up by 25 per cent as well (this was a change from £8,000 to £10,000).
For the men, the overall increase was 25 per cent, in the form of 60 and 20 per cent rises for the top two bands, and five per cent or less for all of the bottom five.
Yearly % change in value of women's Hundred salary bands under the draft system (exc. captain's bonus)
| Salary band | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
| Band A | - | +108% | 0% | +60% | +30% |
| Band B | - | +108% | 0% | +60% | +25% |
| Band C | - | +108% | 0% | +60% | +20% |
| Band D | - | +108% | 0% | +17% | +14% |
| Band E | - | +108% | 0% | +12% | +14% |
| Band F | - | +108% | 0% | +10% | +14% |
| Band G | - | +108% | 0% | +7% | +25% |
| Overall | - | +121% | -6% | +41% | +23% |
Effectively, even before the auction could come in, major increases to player salaries still took place at the top end of the scale. From the administrator’s point of view, this is a good look for the league, showcasing that there is investment in the game, and how players can make a tidy sum through this competition.
Pay disparity can be narrowed if it becomes a priority
The auction has perhaps highlighted the difference more, but even under this system, pay disparity can still be narrowed. Take the women’s Hundred. The minimum base price – therefore, the minimum salary for a player that secured a deal – was £15,000, or 1.7 per cent of the salary cap.
At player auctions, franchises largely bank on picking up 3-4 players at base price. In this case, that would allow them to put aside ~£60,000 for “squad fillers”, allowing them to go harder at the big-hitters in the auction.
Raising this floor under an auction system could squeeze the distribution of salaries on both ends of the scale.
Currently, the highest and lowest-paid women’s players in the Hundred make about half of their male counterparts. At the top end, the actual sums are of less consequence, but at the bottom end that can make a more-than-tangible difference to a player’s livelihood. Consider that in 2021, the lowest salary band in the men’s Hundred was worth £24,000. In 2025, the women’s lowest salary band was still £10,000 and even after a doubling of investment in 2026, the lowest base price in the auction was £15,000.
If, for example, the minimum base price in the women’s competition was on a par with the men’s at £31,000, then, at 3.5 per cent, the lowest-paid players in the squad would receive a larger piece of the pie than ever before in this league, making the competition a more realistic earning prospect for players across the board, not just those at the top. A similar argument can be advanced for an increase on the men's side as well.
Also read: £390k: Uncapped county all-rounder eclipses Root, Rashid to fetch highest bid of Hundred auction
Simultaneously, this would force franchises to set aside closer to ~£124,000 for their squad players. In turn, this makes it less feasible to push the bidding higher and higher for the top-end players, thereby bringing down the ceiling a touch, and reducing disparity in salaries across the league as well.
The auction does have a part to play in the widening gap of salaries, most visibly and significantly at the top end of the scale. It has perhaps copped some unfair flak as well – the core issue is not the format itself. In fact, this auction ended up with one result that bucks a trend; At £210,000, Devine and Mooney became the best-paid overseas women's cricketers, earning a touch more than the £200,000 Aiden Markram will take home as the most expensive male overseas player at the event.
In a draft or an auction, the issue of disparity can be tempered at the least. But as with any system, that depends significantly on whether it is a priority for those at the negotiating tables and in the boardrooms.
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