WPL 2024: BCCI To Set Up Domestic Red-Ball Format For Women's Team

WPL 2024: After the Women's Premier League aka WPL 2024 edition which is slated for next month, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) will conduct women's days cricket in the month of March-April, according to reports. India had no domestic multi-day events for women since 2018. The BCCI has been trying to power women's cricket and already has one-day and T20 cricket teams at all domestic levels.

Taking cognizance of the massive response to women's cricket, the BCCI also started the Women's Premier League (WPL) last year and its second edition will be held in Delhi and Bengaluru this time starting from February 22.

According to the reports, the cricket body has a plan to start days cricket in zonal format from this season, and soon a tournament like the men's Ranji Trophy will be organized for the women's too.

"It will be a three-day tournament to start with. Due to the constraint of time, we are thinking of starting with a zonal format initially. The tournament will be concluded in the month of March-April. We don't have red ball cricket for the women's team (currently) and the BCCI felt it's time to start day's cricket as well as domestic cricket for women," a BCCI official told the media.

According to cricket data scientist, John Leather, India is the most recent to have a women's cricket team to play domestic days cricket.

"India briefly revived their multi-day women's domestic cricket in the 2010s, playing 10 inter-zonal matches a season for four years from 2014/15 until 2017/18 (2-dayers in 2014/15 and 3-dayers in the other three seasons). The last such match was played in 2018. England hasn't played any multi-day domestic matches since the Territorial tournament in 1991. While in Australia, the last multi-day women's domestic cricket was the finals series of the Australian Women's Cricket Championship (pre-cursor to the WNCL) in 1994/95," Leather said.