Guwahati: The Women’s Indian Premier League (WIPL), a five-team tournament, is scheduled to begin on February 26 of the following year, immediately following the completion of the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup.
ESPNCricinfo reports that the BCCI’s proposed schedule includes 22 games and each squad will have 18 players, with a maximum of six foreign players.
A playing XI cannot have more than five foreign players on it at once with four players from a full-member nation and one from an associate side.
The plan was distributed to state associations on Thursday. According to the schedule, each team will play every other team twice throughout the league round. The league stage’s top-placed player advances directly to the championship. The second finalist will be chosen by an elimination match between the second and third-place clubs from the league stage.
The WIPL will end before the men’s IPL, despite the fact that BCCI has not yet finalised the schedule. The IPL for men is anticipated to begin in March. Also conceivable is a conflict between the WIPL and the inaugural Women’s Pakistan Super League season.
“It will be a challenge to play the WIPL in the home and away format, because with five to six teams it is not possible to have a match every day.
It is suggested that the tournament can be played in caravan style, where after finishing ten matches at one venue, the next ten matches to be played at the next venue. Therefore, ten matches each to be played across two venues in the 2023 WIPL season, ten each in the next two venues in the 2024 season, and for the 2025 season ten matches in the remaining one venue and the remaining ten in one of the venues from 2023 season,” said BCCI in the paper on WIPL, which it sent to states as part of agenda for board’s annual general meeting, which will take place on October 18.
BCCI will be selling five franchises for WIPL. Unlike men’s IPL, in which franchises bid for teams in a particular city, BCCI has chalked two plans.
The first plan comprises selling teams across six zones all over the country. A set of cities in each zone has been shorlisted: Dharamsala/Jammu (North zone), Pune/Rajkot (West), Indore/Nagpur/Raipur (Central), Ranchi/Cuttack (East), Kochi/Visakhapatnam (South) and Guwahati (North-East).
In another plan, teams will be sold without a solid home base and matches will take place at six shortlisted IPL venues, namely Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai.
The IPL Governing Council chairman, whose position will be selected at the AGM, will make the final choice alongside other BCCI office-bearers once the BCCI presents this idea at its AGM the following week.
Women’s cricket has begun to gain popularity in India since the women’s team lost to England in the 2017 ODI World Cup finals.
The Women’s T20 Challenge was introduced by BCCI in 2018, and it initially consisted of just one match. But it was increased to three teams over time.
“With the rise in popularity of women’s cricket in the country mainly due to prominent performances by the Indian Senior Cricket team on the world stage by qualifying for semi-finals in 2018 T20 World Cup, finals in 2020 T20 World Cup, securing a silver medal in the recently held 2022 Commonwealth games in Birmingham, we intend to conduct the Women’s IPL on similar lines with the Indian Premier League,” said BCCI in its paper on WIPL.
According to a report, there has been a significant increase in women’s cricket on the domestic front, with “an overall increase of 111 percent in involvement of players across various categories” over the eight-year period between 2014 and 2022. According to a further breakdown, the percentage rose to 129% for senior women and 92% for those under the age of 19.
The Women’s Big Bash League, Caribbean Premier League, and The Hundred are T20 leagues that have helped boost interest in women’s cricket around the world. The WIPL will soon join them.