It might’ve been the last day of January but we did still put out a podcast for you to watch! Welcome back to Cricket Huddle and our State of Cricket podcast, the best cricket podcast on the internet by the fans, of the fans, and for the fans. The topic of discussion for today is the introduction of the Women’s Premier League (WPL). We will also look at the state of women’s cricket in general. 

There will be five franchises involved in the league: Gujarat Giants (Ahmedabad), Lucknow Warriors (Lucknow), and unnamed teams from Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Delhi. The BCCI got Rs 4669.99 crore ($572 million) from the sale of the five teams, thus beating the rights of the eight original IPL teams (~Rs 3166 crore/$387 million) in 2008. The main questions we do have to ask about the WPL are: 1. Is this a viable product for women’s cricket and 2. Will it match up to the standards of the IPL? One of the main issues we have seen/faced with women’s white-ball cricket (20 or 50 overs) in general is the slowness of the game. In men’s cricket, we are so used to power hitting and 10+ runs an over (especially in T20s). Only the Australian Women have been able to match that intensity whenever they play. The other countries, not so much.

We disagreed with BCCI President Roger Binny’s statement of women empowerment being one of the main reasons for the creation of the WPL. Is there even a demand for a women’s cricket league at this point of time? At the time of the creation of the IPL, there were only two T20 leagues in the world: the T20 Blast (England & Wales) and the Super Smash (New Zealand). However, those were meant to be domestic T20 competitions of those countries, not global franchise leagues like the IPL. Meanwhile, with women’s cricket, there are two T20 franchise leagues already present: the Women’s Big Bash League (Australia) and the Women’s Caribbean Premier League (West Indies) in addition to eight other domestic competitions. There’s also The Hundred Women’s Competition in England, which is a 100-ball franchise league as well. In terms of women’s franchise cricket, Pakistan will also join the fray in September 2023 with their Pakistan Women’s T20 League.

We also talk about the timing of the WPL, like it needs to be in the “sweet spot” of the cricket schedule so that there’s not much overlap with other tournaments in the world. The introduction of the WPL will help girls all over India, regardless of where they live, to pursue cricket as a career. There can be a lot of development in the women’s game due to this. It’s a very exciting time for women’s cricket, and the WPL will be a must-watch competition this year. We think more excitement could come if the WPL makes different rules than the ones in men’s cricket. Lastly, congratulations to the Indian U-19 Women’s team for winning the inaugural ICC Women’s Under-19 Cricket World Cup! BCCI Secretary Jay Shah made an amazing tweet referencing this along with the upswing of Indian women’s cricket.

If you are interested in the rest of the conversation, please check out the links below: