2018 Review: 5 firsts for Indian women's cricket

#2 Live broadcast for women's international matches

India Blue Celebrating their victory in Challenger Trophy

Despite doing so much for the country, Women in Blue always struggled to get broadcasters to their games. India vs England women’s matches at Nagpur is still fresh in our memory.

ICC, the global governing body of cricket, played a significant part in increasing the global interest in women's cricket. 2017 World Cup was broadcasted and live streamed across 139 countries, whereas the standalone World T20 across more than 200 countries. The hunger could be clearly visualised from the increase in number in just a space of one year.

And India, as the top-notch contributor to the viewership, BCCI didn't want to miss on the opportunity. April 2018, Star India Pvt. Ltd. played the biggest gamble of its corporate career and bagged BCCI's media rights for domestic as well as international games for Rs. 6138.50 crores.

They already telecasted the Challenger Trophy and one can expect them to telecast more tournament in the coming days.

#1 Central contracts for Indian women

It had been over ten years since the Women's Cricket Association of India merged with the BCCI yet, whenever the BCCI announced its annual contracts to its players, no one ever heard about the women. Of course, because they were always kept stranded of the central annual contracts.

It was the first time for the Indian female cricketers in the last 12 years since the merger, to feel proud of playing for the richest cricket board in the world. India's top-flight women cricketer, with a stroke of a pen, became the highest-paid cricketers in the world.

BCCI distributed central contracts to women players in three different categories A, B & C where Grade A players would get Rs 50 lakh, Grade B Rs 30 lakh and Grade C Rs 10 lakh. Mithali Raj, Harmanpreet Kaur, Jhulan Goswami and Smriti Mandhana, were given Grade A contracts. BCCI gave out 19 contracts in total.