Indian opener Smriti Mandhana believes there are sufficient women cricketers in the country for the introduction of a six-team Women’s Indian Premier League. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is being asked to launch women’s IPL for a long time.
Mandhana believes the quality of men’s cricket has improved significantly with the help of IPL and the same can be the case with women’s cricket if the league is introduced for them as well.
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“There are same number of states for men and women. So, when they started men’s IPL, there were same number of states. But the quality went higher and higher as the years passed by,” Madhana said on Ravichandran Ashwin’s YouTube channel.
“What IPL is today, it wasn’t the same 10 or 11 years back. I think it’s the same for women’s cricket. We have same amount of girls playing cricket. For now, I think we will have good five or six teams to start with and probably grow to eight teams in one or two years. But till the time we don’t start, we don’t know.”
Mandhana feels the league could give the women the right kind of exposure that is required to improve their games.
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“Five-six teams, we are good to go with. But eight teams, I am still not sure how it will look like. But I think we really need to start with five or six teams so that we can actually get to eight teams very soon. I think till we don’t start, we are not giving exposure to our girls to turn their cricket into a really different level,” she said.
The 25-year-old gave the example of Women’s Big Bash League in Australia, which helped their bench strength significantly. She feels the same be replicated in India with women’s IPL.
“I played in Big Bash four years back and now the quality is very different. You can see that in Cricket Australia where they have 40-50 cricketers ready to play international cricket any day. So, I really want that to happen in Indian cricket. I think IPL will play a huge role in that,” Mandhana added.
Currently, the BCCI hosts a Women’s T20 Challenge which features three teams — Trailblazers, Supernovas and Velocity.
