Mumbai: The Indian Premier League is considered to be one of the saviors of modern-day cricket in India. The thrill of shorter formats draws audiences and fans in large numbers to the stadium year after year.
The Board of Control for Cricket In India (BCCI) has the same plans for the future of Women’s cricket in our country. The need for Women’s IPL was hard to ignore after the Indian Women Cricket Team rise to the top.
The tournament started with a single match prior to the men’s qualifier match in Mumbai back in 2018. IPL Trailblazers and IPL Supernova clashed for the first time and marked the beginning of a new chapter in women’s cricket history.
Since then, another team was added to the list named IPL Velocity. The current format of the tournament is a ‘robin-round’ format in which the top two teams end up playing in the finals in a four-match structure.
BCCI President Sourav Ganguly has bigger plans for the Women’s T20 Challenge edition with new sponsors and a structure of increasing the count of teams from three to seven or eight by next year.
Current teams include Smriti Mandhana leading the Trailblazers, Harmanpreet Kaur in charge of the Supernova, and Deepti Sharma leading team Velocity this season. The teams are allowed to have four foreign players in the playing eleven, just like in IPL. Players like Laura Wolvaardt from South Africa, Sharmin Akter from Bangladesh Women’s team, Hayley Matthews from West Indies, and many more are part of different teams this year.
In the current run, Supernova is leading the points table followed by Velocity in the second position. Skipper Harmanpreet Kaur is leading the side with an outstanding inning of 721 runs in the opening game of the season for Supernova. Velocity also won the first match and will be eyeing a spot in the upcoming finals to be played in Pune on 28th May.
BCCI President Sourav Ganguly in a press conference said that the year 2023 will be a year of “WIPL” (Women Indian Premier League) with a “full-fledged” run next year.