Women's T20 Challenge to be played during IPL playoffs: Sourav Ganguly

Women’s cricket has taken giant strides in recent years and has gained massive popularity. Events like World Cup are largely followed by fans and experts across the globe. Owing to the same, many national boards have even started their women’s T20 leagues in the country. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is also planning to do the same.

The board had conducted three seasons Women’s T20 Challenge, which is a three-team round-robin format tournament held alongside the Indian Premier League (IPL). The inaugural season took place in 2018 and was last played in 2020. Women’s T20 Challenge couldn’t take place last year due to the busy calendar and COVID-19 issues. Meanwhile, BCCI president Sourav Ganguly has stated that the Women’s T20 Challenge will be back this year during IPL 2022 playoffs.

BCCI will conduct women’s IPL once the number of players goes up: Sourav Ganguly

He also said that BCCI would conduct a full-fledged women’s IPL once the number of women’s players goes up. “The Women’s T20 Challenge will again be back this year in the month of May. Hopefully, in the future, we will be able to host a bigger women’s IPL once the number of women players goes up. But this year, the Women’s T20 Challenge will happen during the IPL playoffs,” Ganguly was quoted as saying by Sportstar.

Meanwhile, Ganguly also said that the domestic season of women’s cricket will resume in a month once the number of COVID-19 cases go down. “We have time for the Cooch Behar Trophy. Let this COVID settle down a bit, we can hold it because it is just at the knockout stage and only a few matches are pending. We can do it in April-May,” said Ganguly.

“Similarly, with the women’s tournament, we will do it as well. We are presuming that in another month, the number of cases will go down and we can host it,” he added. Meanwhile, IPL 2022 is scheduled to get underway in the last week of March and BCCI would not want COVID-19 to spoilsport yet again. For the unversed, IPL 2021 was postponed midway in May last year and the remaining competition took place in UAE in September-October.