On April 23, Sourav Ganguly, the BCCI President made an official announcement that the next edition of the Women’s T20 Challenge will be played from May 24 to May 28 in Lucknow. Ganguly made the announcement after the apex council meeting of the BCCI.
This will be the last edition of the three-team Women’s T20 Challenge as a six-team Women’s IPL is likely to take off from 2023. All the matches of the Women’s T20 Challenge will be played at Ekana Stadium in Lucknow.
The first edition of the Women’s T20 Challenge was played in 2018 when only two teams, namely, Supernovas and Trailblazers took part. In 2019, a third team, Velocity was added to the mix. In the following year, the Women’s T20 Challenge, which was now a three-team affair was played in the UAE due to COVID-19 restrictions in India. After a hiatus of a year, the Women’s T20 Challenge will be back this year and will be played alongside IPL play-offs.
So far, the most successful team has been Supernovas which have won the title twice, in 2018 and 2019. India’s T20I captain Harmanpreet Kaur leads Supernovas. The current champions are Trailblazers, which are captained by India’s T20I vice-captain Smriti Mandhana.
BCCI president Ganguly confirms the Women’s T20 Challenge to be held at Lucknow this year.#IPL2022 #WomensIPL pic.twitter.com/h7MPmcWC7q
— Female Cricket (@imfemalecricket) April 23, 2022
Just like its previous editions, the Women’s T20 Challenge will see a total of four matches being played. Each team plays the other once in a round-robin format and the top two teams play the finals. The first edition was played in Mumbai, the second in Jaipur, the third in UAE and now the fourth will be held in Lucknow. It is known that earlier Pune was shortlisted as the venue however due to some reason the BCCI decided to finalize Lucknow as the hosts.
With India’s success in the ICC Women’s World T20 that was played in Australia in 2020 in which the Women in Blue ended as the runners-up, there is seldom any doubt that the fans would be eager to see their favorite players in action in the shortest format. At present, the Indian domestic, as well as the international players, are busy playing the senior women’s T20 league. The tournament will end on May 4 and the players will be back in action on May 24. In the last three editions, there were overseas players too in the mix. It is expected that they could turn up for the Women’s T20 Challenge this year too.
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I am a former cricketer having represented Mumbai University at All India University level. I was a part of MCA probables for the U-19 and U-23 age group. I have been an avid cricket writer for the last five years. Currently I am pursuing my Ph.D from IIT Bombay.