Smriti Mandhana and Jemimah Rodrigues speak at length about importance of Women's IPL

India Women’s team skipper  Harmanpreet Kaur has explained how the Women’s IPL will act as a huge platform in developing women’s cricket going forward. At the same time, she also credited Cricket Australia (CA) and the England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to have come up with the Women’s versions of the Big Bash League (BBL) and The Hundred.

Meanwhile, Kaur’s teammates Smriti Mandhana and Jemimah Rodrigues have also explained how the Women’s IPL will go a long way in ensuring that the budding Indian players get international exposure and how it will also increase the bench strength.

Mandhana gave a special mention to the WBBL and the Women’s Hundred and said how these franchise tournaments having immensely benefitted both Australia and England’s domestic cricket set-ups.

Women’s IPL is going to help the domestic girls massively: Smriti Mandhana

"We have discussed that there's a big gap between domestic and international cricket, because even if you play well in domestic cricket and then suddenly play international games, you're not able to understand what to do and how to do it,” Mandhana was quoted as saying by NDTV.

"All of women's cricket, I won't say the Indian team or the domestic set-up. We keep talking about how it will increase the bench strength. But actually, the fact is that it's going to help the domestic girls massively because that sort of experience in playing in leagues like this will get a lot of things sorted for women's cricket," she added.

"Grassroot wise and we have seen how the Big Bash and The Hundred have helped Australia and England respectively in their domestic set-up as well as other things,” said the southpaw.

Meanwhile, Jemimah Rodrigues is confident that the Women’s IPL is all set to usher in a new era in Women’s cricket and also highlighted how well the Women in Blue have been performing in major ICC tournaments. At the same time, she also spoke about their silver medal finish at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.

"So, I'm actually really happy, the Indian team will benefit a lot from the women's IPL, but it's also going to benefit a lot of domestic girls which I'm looking forward to,” said Jemimah.

"The women's IPL is going to change a lot of things for women's cricket in India. I think this is like the best platform for us now that we as an Indian team have been doing so well in all the major events like the World Cup, the Commonwealth,” the promising batter added.

"This is just the right time for it to happen and I'm sure that we are going to get so much more talent that's going to come out from here. I am very sure that women's cricket in India is all set to go to the next level after the women's IPL," she further added.