India cricketer Smriti Mandhana has backed the idea of women's Indian Premier League, saying that there should be one with 5-6 teams as women's cricket in the country has a lot of depth.
Mandhana was recently part of The Hundred tournament in England, where she scored 167 runs in seven matches. Both men and women tournament of the new format was going on simultaneously.
The 25-year-old expects the quality of the women's IPL to get better with time if it's started now. "There are same number of states for men and women. So, when they started men's IPL, there were same number of states. But the quality went higher and higher as the years passed by. What IPL is today, it wasn't the same 10 or 11 years back.
"I think it's the same for women's cricket. We have the same amount of girls playing cricket. For now, I think we will have good five or six teams to start with and probably grow to eight teams in one or two years. But till the time we don't start, we don't know," she said in an episode on R Ashwin's YouTube channel.
Mandhana is fed up of the same conversation about the women's depth in India and she said the best way to find out is by starting the tournament.
"We can't always have the conversation like is there any depth or no. We have never had a competition in women's cricket which is like six teams in a T20 tournament. So, we don't know if we have or no. How can we just judge and say we don't have?," she said.
"Five-six teams, we are good to go with. But eight teams, I am still not sure how it will look like. But I think we really need to start with five or six teams so that we can actually get to eight teams very soon. I think till we don't start; we are not giving exposure to our girls to turn their cricket into a really different level," Mandhana added.
The India batter has also played for Western Storm in the Kia Super League in England and represented Brisbane Heat in the women's Big Bash League in Australia.
"I played in Big Bash four years back and now the quality is very different. You can see in Australia where they have 40-50 cricketers ready to play international cricket any day. So, I really want that to happen in Indian cricket. I think IPL will play a huge role in that," she said.
