Women’s IPL: It’s been a long run-up to the crease, ladies

It’s finally happened. After three years of experimentation, with three teams playing a short five match set, the BCCI has finally announced a full-fledged Women’s IPL. Actually, ‘full-fledged’ may be a bit of a stretch. The inaugural men’s tournament featured 8 franchises playing a total of 59 matches. In the first year, the women’s tournament will feature 5 franchises. And, given that league stages are usually played in a round-robin format, qualifying 4 teams out of 5 makes little sense. It’ll probably be a 21- or a 22-match format if 3rd and 4th place teams also play-off against each other.

While it has generally been welcomed as a step forward, the two issues being debated:

Why has it taken so long to start a women’s league, given that IPL was the first T20 league and literally established the pro-cricket format way back in 2008?

Why 5 teams, where even a basic dipstick indicates that there is enough interest for teams to have at least 8, if not 10 competing franchises?

The first can probably be attributed to a couple of factors. Anyone following IPL for the last few years will just look at the impressive numbers and the relatively stable franchises. But the first 6-7 years of IPL, while wildly successful, were hugely tumultuous. Moved out the country in 2009 to avoid a general election. Lalit Modi removed in 2010. Kochi scrapped, Pune withdrawing. CSK and Rajasthan banned. The list goes on.

Nobody in the BCCI or IPL had any thought beyond the survival of the golden goose – the men’s tournament. When things calmed down, expanding the men’s league was a much more lucrative priority. And it was just easier to organise a token 5-match tournament than go to the trouble of auctioning franchises and setting up a proper calendar and league for the women.

The second contentious issue stemmed from the fact that the pool of quality women’s players was always a worry for the administrators. In conversations in 2012, a senior BCCI selector told me that there were about 15-20 women players of professional quality and that the standards dipped precipitously after the top 20. Given that every team would require at least 10 quality Indian players along with the 5 international players, at least 50 decent Indian players would be needed to make sure standards were consistent.

And that was, perhaps, the yardstick in looking at 5 franchises in the first year, working backwards from the perceived quality pool.

There are many detractors to the argument, some claiming that it was a chicken-and-egg situation. The faster the league started, the more women’s players would be motivated and get a platform to raise their game. Others just claim that these pool numbers were wildly subjective. In any event, by allowing 5 foreigners per team, as opposed to 4 in the IPL, the Women’s IPL is trying to ensure a certain quality.

How big can this league be? Impressive national team performances and far greater awareness means that the top women’s players today are well known and followed, a far cry from the horror years of the 1990s when women played a total of 26 ODIs in the entire decade, while the men’s teams were playing 40 matches a year. And right now, given the interest in teams, the men’s tournament will not even have to subsidise the event to ensure a fair deal for players.

Women’s professional sport has come a long way. Golf, and then tennis since the 1970s and Billie Jean King, were at the forefront of the action. But in the last two decades, the Women’s Premier League football in England, where top players could earn up to £400,000 (₹3.68 crore), and the WNBA basketball in the US have shown that top level women’s team sport is here to stay.

The BCCI has taken its time. But if they get this right, this league could be one of the most empowering moments for women’s sport in India.