Harshita
NEW DELHI: Indian women's ODI captain Mithali Raj feels that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) should start women's IPL by 2021. She also mentioned that women's IPL could be on "smaller-scale", unlike men's IPL.
Mithali said, "I personally feel they should start a women's IPL by next year, even if it's on a slightly smaller scale and with some changes in rules, such as, say, have five to six foreign players in the first edition instead of four as is the case with the men's IPL."
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The BCCI has hosted Women's IPL exhibition matches in the last two years but had said that a full-fledged event will take some time to organize.
In this year's Women's T20 Challenge tournament, a total of seven matches are scheduled to be played in the tournament during the IPL Playoff week in Jaipur. However, that seems to be highly unlikely that the tournament will be held due to the outbreak of novel coronavirus in the world that has sent India into 21 days' lockdown.
Speaking how the women's cricket is not of that importance as compared to men's cricket in India, Mithali said, "I agree we don't have the depth in the domestic pool yet, but the key is to get the existing franchises to form teams, even if (only) five or six of them are keen to begin the process because in any case, the BCCI was going to have four teams (in the Women's T20 Challenge)."
She added, "You cannot wait forever; you have to begin at some point, and gradually, year by year, you can keep evolving the league and then bring it down to four foreign players."
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Earlier, former Indian cricketer Sunil Gavaskar also urged Sourav Ganguly, BCCI President, to plan something to organize women's IPL in the country from 2021.
