Indian Premier League style game for Indian women cricketers is ‘not immediately practicable’, a top Board of Control for Cricket in India official told a leading daily newspaper The Hindu.
“A tournament on the lines of the Indian Premier League (IPL) may not be immediately practicable,” The Hindu quoted a top BCCI official as saying.
“The Board welcomes the idea but there are many hurdles and the biggest involves having a pool of players who would meet international standards,” the BCCI official said.
“You would need at least 60 players of which 15 to 20 could be drafted from overseas. Honestly, how many players do we have like Mithali, Harmanpreet (Kaur), Smriti (Mandhana), Veda (Krishnamurthy), Deepti (Sharma) and Jhulan (Goswami). The truth is we would need players who can be termed crowd pullers,” the official added.
Earlier, impressed with women’s team performance, former Indian Women’s captain Diana Edulji who is one of the members of Committee of Administrators said: “We are in talks of having a Woman’s IPL. It is still on the drawing board. But now we need to look at it seriously. To start with we need to have a 5 team affair. It will encourage more cricketers to come out and play.”
Indian skipper Mithali Raj, who led Indian women cricket team to the finals of the ICC Women’s World Cup, also said that women’s Indian Premier League (IPL) style league will surely help domestic players in getting exposure.
#WATCH Live: Indian women's cricket team address a press conference in Mumbai. https://t.co/kjfT07ysGx
— ANI (@ANI_news) July 26, 2017
“If something like this is started in India, it will help players in getting exposure but it’s upto the BCCI,” Mithali said upon arriving in India.
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