The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) secretary Jay Shah has revealed that the board is working on an IPL style league for women’s cricketers thanks to the ever-growing popularity of domestic T20 leagues like the Women’s Big Bash League and the Women’s Hundred tournament.
The BCCI has organized a Women’s T20 challenge alongside the men’s Indian Premier League in previous editions and many popular foreign female cricketers took part in the tournament featuring the cream of Indian players.
In an interview with Hindustan Times’ Shalini Gupta, Jay Shah revealed that BCCI is working on a domestic T20 league for female cricketers.
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“The women’s T20 Challenge has drawn a huge interest among the fans and that is an encouraging sign. We all want a league like IPL for our women cricketers, but it is not just about putting together three or four teams and announcing the launch of a women’s IPL league. There are a lot of factors that come into play like a dedicated window, availability of international stars and bilateral commitments of member boards to name a few. We are exploring all our options and working towards organising a similar league for our female players in future,” Jay Shah said in an interview with Hindustan Times.
“Players like Smriti Mandhana and Harmanpreet Kaur have been very vocal about India having its own T20 league and helping overhaul the standard of the game in India,” he added.
He also lauded other Indian women’s cricketers who have done well in foreign T20 leagues like Deepti Sharma, Jemimah Rodrigues, and Shafali Verma amongst others.
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He said, “Having a league similar to the IPL will surely benefit our cricketers as they will get to play alongside international stars. Other than Smriti and Harmanpreet, other Indian team women cricketers did well in leagues like The Hundred and WBBL. Deepti Sharma, Jemimah Rodrigues, Shafali Verma and Poonam Yadav are all sought-after players and role models in India. Their stint will definitely help them grow in confidence.”
Jay Shah also opined on the possibility of the Indian women’s team playing more five-day Test matches in the future.
“At present England and Australia are the only two major teams that play red-ball cricket in women’s cricket. We have made a start and will look to capitalize on this. We also played a historic pink-ball Test against Australia, and our girls dominated the Test although it was their first outing with the pink ball. The number of Test matches can go up as we have more international teams taking part in the red-ball format,” he said.
(Hindustan Times inputs)
