BCCI Mulls Mini League to Kickstart Women's IPL: Reports

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) will ponder to kickstart a mini league – to take baby steps towards Women Indian Premier League (WIPL).

Well, the Women’s Twenty20 Challenge exhibition match was recently played at the historic Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. However, Indian board is considering to include three-four teams in the mini league.

The Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators’ (CoA) chairman Vinod Rai had recently said that BCCI will commence a Women IPL in next two-three years.

Moreover, it is reported BCCI wants to continue with the exhibition match. Indian Express has reported that the Board is mulling to commence a mini league on a small scale.

This is a good step by the BCCI:

However, the crowd didn’t turn out in numbers for the exhibition match. Thus, BCCI official said that they will plan in a better way when the match will take place next year.

BCCI’s spokesperson added that the popularity of Women Cricket will slowly increase. Thus, the Indian board is trying its best to towards its development.

“It’s important to have continuity. The exhibition game was just a start. We agree to the fact that we could have planned it better which we will do from next season. There were various reasons for the stadium being near-empty but we are hopeful that slowly the popularity will increase. That is why we are now mulling a 3-4 team women’s league from next year in smaller centres. Smaller cities like Baroda, have seen a great turnout for women’s games generally,” BCCI official was quoted as saying by Indian Express.

Imperative to first create a base.

Vinod Rai had recently said that they are considering to start Women IPL in a time frame of two-three years.

“We are planning to get a women’s IPL in place in two to three years,” Rai had told AFP earlier.

Pressure is mounting on BCCI to take into consideration the Women IPL after India ended up as runners-up in the World Cup. However, this is a good step by the BCCI.

It is imperative to create a base before launching Women IPL on a bigger scale.

Moreover, there are not many developed domestic women players. BCCI should make sure that the domestic women cricketers increase their standard of play before they launch the fresh league.

Lucrative T20 league like IPL has helped in taking Indian Cricket to new heights. Consequently, the Women IPL will raise the bar for the women’s cricket in India.

Meanwhile, we have noticed players like Smriti Mandhana, Veda Krishnamurthy, and Harmanpreet Kaur show an upward swing in their improvement graph after playing in the Women Big Bash League (WBBL).