India’s One-day International captain Mithali Raj has urged the Indian Premier League franchises to push for a women’s T20 league to take place, suggesting a four-five team tournament would be ideal to begin with.
Raj was part of the T20 Challenger last year, which saw large crowds turn up at the Sawai Man Singh stadium in Jaipur and has been vocal about setting up the T20 extravaganza for the women too.
“Honestly, if you had asked me this question three years back, I would still have been hesitant to say we should have a women’s IPL,” Raj told sports broadcaster Radhakrishnan Sreenivasan.
“But now with this year’s T20 World Cup, where India was a finalist, I think it’s a good time to actually have it. If not in a full-fledged way, maybe with a few teams – maybe 4 to 5 of them – and you can relax a few rules because it’ll be the first time you’ll be conducting the IPL for women in India.”
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Raj also asked the IPL franchises to step up to help start a women’s T20 league. “This year BCCI was supposed to add one more team in the Challenger Trophy, make it four teams and turn it into a league.
She added: “They saw the kind of feedback we got last year [for the T20 Challenge]. A lot of people turned up at the stadium and the viewership was very good. But it is just not about BCCI taking the initiative, at some level we would definitely need the IPL franchises to come in and take this forward.
“When the world is talking about women empowerment, I think this is the right time to come forward and support the women’s team. Start a league and then see how it grows.”
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Currently, each IPL team can field only four overseas players in their starting XI but Raj thinks relaxing this rule for the women’s edition will give the league a much-needed boost.
“It is very obvious that we don’t have too many quality players, domestically,” she said.
“We do have a good 25 players, but beyond 25 players, you might find a difference when you watch them play against the Indian players. There is a huge difference in the standard, which would be very obvious when you see it on television.”
The 37-year-old added: “If you have a good 25 players, and then you add foreign players, you may not go beyond 3-4 teams. So if you relax the rules, and allow maybe five foreign players to start with, you can have four to five teams. Once the pool of players increases, when the standard goes up, then you can change it and get it back to four overseas players in a team.”
Raj cited the example of 16-year-old opener Shafali Varma, who was a breakout star the T20 Challenger Trophy last year.
“It is time that we start something like that because a lot of young girls, like Shafali [Verma] — I always give her example, because she is a find of the Challenger Trophy, which the BCCI has been doing in the last two years,” she said.
“We got to see the talent that she has, and she was picked for the T20 World Cup. “If we don’t have a tournament like this mid-year, most of the players are only banking on the domestic season.
“What if a player misses out on the domestic season, for whatever factors? She cannot look for any other opportunity throughout the year. It’s important that a women’s IPL does take place. If not this year, next year.”
Watch Mithali Raj’s chat with sports commentator Radhakrishnan Sreenivasan here:
