Smriti Mandhana has joined the clarion call for a women’s IPL. She has said that with a women’s IPL, the quality of Indian women’s domestic cricket will increase and can improve the bench strength of the Indian national women’s team.
The 25-year-old stylish batter was on Ravichandran Ashwin’s YouTube channel, speaking to him about the benefits of a women’s IPL. She has said that the number of states is the same for women and men when the IPL was created. The standards got higher and higher as the years passed by, she added further to the conversation, and the IPL isn’t the same as it was 10-11 years back and it will be the same for women.
For her, IPL will work the same way it has for men’s cricket and will directly benefit the bench strength of India, as it will create a higher quality of domestic players in the Indian women’s setup. She gave an example of the Women’s Big Bash, which has played a role in increasing the bench strength of the Australian Women’s team because the quality increased year after year. The batter added that the Indian women’s cricket needs that exposure and till they don’t start, the quality of cricket won’t turn into a different level.
She has mentioned that initially, it should be a six-team IPL for the women. She said, “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.”
For now, BCCI only organizes the Woman’s T20 Challenge which consists of three teams- Trailblazers, Supernovas and Velocity.
