The age old rivalry is never between Pakistan and India or Australia and England. It is between the men and women. The game of Cricket hasn’t been that proactive for women as compared to men, especially in countries like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. However, the recent past has seen dramatic changes in the women’s world of Cricket. The most significant being the start of Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL) in 2015/16 season based on the franchise model of Indian Premier League. The next thing it put forward is the association of foreign players to participate in it. The women cricketers from West Indies, New Zealand and England participated in the tournament which the Sidney Sixers won. The tournament was not only successful, but the players participating it spoke highly about how the tournament improved their cricket. India had a narrow miss to the recently concluded Women’s T20 World Cup too. These were may be the reasons that the Board Of Control of Cricket in India decided to grant permissions to Indian women cricketers to play in these leagues. The decision was announced on 1st June during the meeting of the Women’s Cricket Committee in Mumbai.
This has thrown another dice at t BCCI with having growing demand for Indian men cricketers to be given the permission to play Franchise T20 leagues outside India. BCCI, for years, stood with the stand of making and maintaining IPL as the top T20 league in the world and in process denied Indian cricketers from playing in such international leagues. The lack of women’s cricket in India and no seperate league available for them in the nation has probably influenced the decision in favour of Women. However, the decision regarding men cricketers would not go along so quickly. This has resulted into low exposure of Indian players on foreign wickets and lack of continuity in Cricket as well as income for seasoned T20 campaigners. There is also a rising demand that atleast the India ‘A’ players should be allowed to play oversea leagues. Is this policy demotivating the players? Is this fair that the BCCI, in the vow to keep IPL the highest grossing tournament, not letting players the experience of playing in different countries? Is BCCI not considering the long term benefits or is it just the perfect profit-forecast management?
A television advertisement promoting a female targeted two-wheller always rings in the head which says “Why should boys have all the fun?” However, in the context of Male cricketers in India, the same goes “Why should girls have all the fun?” targeted at BCCI.
Till then, lets support the decision regarding women and cheer them in the WBBL where most of them are being picked by the different WBBL teams and lets hope Indian youngsters would get a chance playing abroad soon.
