When Indian Test cricketers used to earn Rs50 a day, Ranji Trophy cricketers Rs5

Dubai: Every budding cricketer dreams of playing for the country. But given the surplus in supply chain in India not everyone gets that opportunity. Despite that young cricketers can still can carve a career out of the sport these days given the high pay scales alloted at the domestic level.

Furthermore a good show at the domestic circuit can give them an opportunity to play in the cash-rich Indian Premier League, which means they start earning big bucks.

But it wasn't the case for Indian cricketers in the 70s and 80s, says veteran Board of Control for Cricket in India administrator Ratnakar Shetty.

Lot of pride

"The youngsters these days probably don't realise that those were the days when Test cricketers used to be paid Rs50 per day. A Ranji Trophy cricketer in the early days used to be paid Rs5," Shetty told Bombay Sport Exchange show.

"But nobody grumbled. They had a lot of pleasure and pride in playing for their state teams and even for India for that matter. It continued in that manner. It was a disciplined approach," he added.

Talking about the growth of BCCI, Shetty said: "It started with a one-room office. The Cricket Club of India was gracious in those days to give space in Brabourne Stadium, not only to the BCCI but also to other sports. Even the office of the Bombay Cricket Association was on the ground floor. The BCCI was on the first floor. The total office space of the BCCI was 500 square feet. So you can imagine from where the BCCI started and rose over the years," he noted.

Shetty said those days the big teams weren't very keen on travelling to India to play matches.

"The only problem that we used to face is when we used to ask West Indies, Australia, and England for a tour, we had to pay guarantee money in those days for them to travel to India. That was the demand from these big teams to come and play in India in those days. And today, the scenario is that even the big three of the ICC, I am not talking about the others, but if you look at Australia and England, even they would like India to come and play five Test matches and have a long tour, reciprocal once in four years. So, that is because your Indian players are bringing in the media rights," he said.

"We used to spend money when the team toured these countries. But when we wanted them to tour our country, we had to pay them a certain amount of guarantee money. The BCCI had to pay, and the BCCI had to recover from the venues who were conducting the Test matches in those days. There were only 5 venues. So, these venues by rotation used to get the matches, and from the ticket revenue, a certain percentage used to come to the board. That's how it was managed," he said.