It seems BCCI has finally given a nod to the Women’s IPL (WIPL) which was long awaited by cricket fans. The inaugural season of the WIPL will be held in March immediately after the Women’s t20 world cup which is scheduled in February.
The BCCI’s proposal states 22 matches in total including 20 league matches. Each team shall have 18 members including 6 overseas in totally. In each XI, 5 overseas players will be allowed including one from the associate nations.
BCCI, on Thursday, sent a circular to the state associations about the proposal of WIPL. The proposal also states that the first finalist will be the league topper while the other will be decided by an eliminator between the second and the third teams. The schedule hasn’t been launched yet but it is believed that WIPL will finish before the start of IPL, which is near the end of the March
It’s not confirmed that BCCI is planning to hold WIPL in March every year but on paper, BCCI has mentioned that the 25-day window in March has been identified by them which makes sure that it will crash with the first season of the Women’s Pakistan Super League.
Venues
It won’t be an easy task to hold the home-away format in the WIPL as there are only five teams.So there is a possibility that the matches can be held in the caravan format. In this format, 10 matches will be held in one venue while the other ten in the other in 2024. In 2024, the other two venues will be chosen and in the next year, the remaining venue and the other ten in one of the venues of 2024.
Teams of WIPL?
The teams of WIPL will be different from the Women’s t20 challenge where teams were selected randomly. In WIPL, teams will be sold to the franchises. Unlike IPL, where trams were sold on a city basis, in WIPL there will be cities on a zone basis. The proposed cities are Jammu/Dharamsala (North zone), Rajkot/Pune (West), Nagpur/Indore/Raipur(Central), Cuttack/Ranchi (East), Visakhapatnam/Kochi(South) and Guwahati (North-East).
According to the second plan, six IPL venues will be chosen without any particular fan base Chennai, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai.
The BCCI will be presenting the WIPL plan next week at the AGM. However, the IPL governing Council chairman will take the final call. It is to be noted that all the new officials will be chosen next week only.
History of Women’s Leagues
Cricket Australia has been the frontrunner in launching the Women oriented t20 league.
They first launched the  Australian Women’s Twenty20 Cup which ran from 2007-08 to 2014-15 which was replaced by the WBBL.
The First edition of WBBL happened in the 2015-16 season.
West Indies organizes the T20 blaze tournament annually. Now they have launched the WCPL as well with the first season commencing this year only.
The hundred was launched by the ECB in 2021 in which the women’s format got more popularity than the men’s one.
BCCI had launched the WT20 challenge in 2018 which included three teams
WIPL: Demand of the times
Deepti Sharma, Mandhana and Kaur as 3 captains of wt20 challenge (BCCI)
In recent times, the popularity of women’s cricket has risen exponentially, thanks to the few achievements by women in blue in recent years. It all started in the 2017 World Cup where Indian women reached the final of the tournament and lost a very closely fought match. Harmanpreet’s single-handed effort to defeat Australia was one of the talking points.
Then, India reached the finals of the T20 world cup as well where they lost to the Australian team. Final had an attendance of more than 80,000 in MCG.
Australia was ahead in launching WBBL (Image CA)
All this led BCCI to hold a three-teams Women’s T20 challenge in 2018 which wasn’t a long affair.
The demand for WIPL has been from many foreign cricketers as well because of the value that IPL has.
The recent performance of Team India in the Commonwealth Games strengthened the demand.
Women’s cricket has attracted many young girls to pick up the sport and according to the data “an overall increase of 111% in participation of players along various categories” between 2014-22.
The WIPL will join the likes of already being played leagues like WBBL, Women’s Hundred, FairBreak Invitational and the WCPL. Along with WIPL, Pakistan is also going to launch WPSL which accelerated the BCCI’s plan.
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