The long wait for the Women’s Indian Premier League (W-IPL) to get underway is finally nearing an end. As reported earlier, it’s understood that the BCCI has reserved a window in March 2023 for the inaugural edition of the women’s IPL and now a sneak peek into the process for the show to get started is unveiled in a report from Cricbuzz.
It is understood that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is opting to allow franchises to field 5 overseas players in each playing XI and out of those 5, a maximum of 4 can be from the International Cricket Council’s (ICC’s) full member nations, while the lone remaining slot can be filled by a player from the associate nations.
The BCCI is expected to have a different approach towards the selling of teams. Quoting, “The board is also debating between two options of selling the IPL teams: Zone wise – North (Dharamsala/Jammu), South (Kochi/Vizag), Central (Indore/Nagpur/Raipur), East (Ranchi/Cuttack), North East (Guwahati) and West (Pune/Rajkot) – with matches held at non-IPL venues) and existing city-wise like with Men’s IPL (Ahmedabad, Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata – with matches held at IPL venues).”
According to the reports,
BCCI is planning to have five teams for the inaugural season of Women’s IPL. #CricketTwitter pic.twitter.com/DV9HEvjYoh
— Female Cricket (@imfemalecricket) October 13, 2022
A count of 5 teams is what can be expected in the inaugural edition of the tournament and the sides are likely to play the other twice in a round-robin format which will bring to us 20 fixtures. The team finishing at the top of the points table will directly qualify for the final and the 2nd and 3rd seeded teams will qualify via the knockouts.
With only 20 games in consideration, there could well be only a couple of venues hosting games which means the league stage games could take place at a venue and the teams advancing for the knockouts, will be traveling to a different venue to close out the tournament.
An official media release or more official details on the Women’s India Premier League (W-IPL) could soon be expected from the BCCI as they alongside state associations are coming together on the 18th of October for the 91st Annual General Meeting (AGM) which has the matter of W-IPL listed for discussion.
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