Former Australia captain Lisa Sthalekar has thrown her assist behind the record-breaking introduction of a completely fledged Indian Premier League-style Twenty20 match for ladies.
Since 2018, the Indian cricket board (BCCI) has been staging a three-team Women’s T20 Challenge alongside the vastly widespread IPL for the lads and confronted calls for to begin a girls’s match.
On Wednesday, the BCCI introduced the sale of 5 franchises for the Women’s Premier League (WPL), which will probably be performed in March, for quantities surpassing these raised on the launch of the lads’s competitors 15 years in the past.
The homeowners of IPL’s Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore franchises are among the many 5 entities who bought groups within the WPL for a mixed whole of greater than $800 million.
The Adani group made the best bid of roughly $223m to purchase the Ahmedabad franchise, whereas Capri Global Holdings agreed to pay $131m for Lucknow.
“Today is a historic day in cricket as the bidding for teams of inaugural WPL broke the records of the inaugural men’s IPL in 2008,” tweeted BCCI secretary Jay Shah.
“This marks the beginning of a revolution in women’s cricket and paves the way for a transformative journey ahead not only for our women cricketers but for the entire sports fraternity.”
Allrounder Sthalekar – who represented Australia between 2001 and 2013, successful 4 world titles alongside the way in which – took to social media to specific her delight on the improvement.
“It sure is HISTORIC,” she wrote. “The women’s game breaking records already & they haven’t even played a game yet. This is so exciting. Congratulations to @BCCI & all involved.”
The BCCI has already offered the match’s media rights for the following 5 years to Viacom 18 for $165m which interprets into per-match-value of $1.2m.
Former India captain Mithali Raj predicted “exciting times” for ladies’s cricket, whereas England batter Danni Wyatt additionally took to Twitter to explain the daybreak of the brand new match as “amazing”.
– with Reuters
