The Women’s IPL(WIPL) will feature 5 teams and a maximum of 5 foreign players in each XI.
The eagerly anticipated Women’s IPL(WIPL) will launch with five teams, prior to the debut of the men’s IPL in March 2024.
The competition would include 20 league games in which each club would play the other twice, according to the BCCI. The teams that finish second and third will compete in the Eliminator, while the table-toppers will advance to the championship game.
The decision of BCCI on WIPL
It had been initially planned to have five teams for the WIPL in order to have a well-balanced roster of native and international players and to have competitive teams. There is a maximum of 18 players per squad, and no team may have more than six overseas players.
Additionally, each team’s starting XI can have no more than five foreign players, four of whom must be Full Members of the ICC and one of them must be an Associate Member of the ICC, according to the BCCI notice.
The maximum squad size for the Women’s Big Bash League in Australia and The Hundred in the United Kingdom is 15, and neither league allows more than three foreign players.
Additionally, the board believes that a home-and-away schedule won’t work with a small number of clubs. The occasion is expected to occur soon after the Women’s T20 World Cup, which will be held in South Africa in February from 9 to 26.
Format of WIPL
Similar to IPL, it will be difficult to play in a home-away format in WIPL because there cannot be a game every day with five to six teams. It is suggested that the tournament be conducted in a caravan format, with the following ten matches taking place at the next venue after the first ten have concluded.
Therefore, ten matches each will be played across two venues in the 2024 WIPL season, ten each in the next two venues in the 2024 season, and for the 2025 season, 10 matches in the remaining one venue and the remaining 10 in one of the venues from the 2024 season. When it comes to the selling of teams, the board may choose two locations from a shortlist of four for each zone.
Ranchi/Cuttack (East), Kochi/Vizag (South), Dharamsala/Jammu (North zone), Pune/Rajkot (West), Indore/Nagpur/Raipur (Central), Ranchi/Jammu (North), and Guwahati (North-East).
As an alternative, teams in the WIPL might be sold, and games could be held at locations where the IPL is now held. These significant cities include Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, and Kolkata. It was widely rumoured following the inaugural Women’s IPL announcement that IPL owners would have first dibs on purchasing teams.
The IPL governing council and BCCI office-holders will make the final decision on all issues pertaining to the Women’s IPL.
Zeal for WIPL
With the development of the sport in India and the team’s runners-up position in 2017, calls for an IPL-style league for women have heightened. While the Hundred was introduced in the UK last year, the WBBL has been played in Australia since 2016. Pakistan has also announced a women’s league for the upcoming season.
According to a BCCI note on the expansion of the game, in India over the past eight years, there has been an overall increase in player engagement across all categories of 111%. While the U-19 category for women has increased, the senior category for women has increased by 129%.
