Women’s cricket appears to be like poised to step out of the imposing shadow of the lads’s recreation in India, and the remainder of the world is bracing for the delivery of a superpower within the sport.
While male gamers have lengthy loved rock star standing within the cricket-mad nation, their feminine counterparts have needed to combat laborious to be taken significantly.
Their wrestle has lastly began yielding outcomes, nonetheless, and 15 years after the launch of the Indian Premier League (IPL), a full-fledged girls’s T20 match will get underway in March.
Crucially, company India has seen monetary sense in investing within the Women’s Premier League (WPL).
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has already pocketed almost $US690 million ($A965 million) from the gross sales of franchises and media rights, with the income move to be boosted additional when a title sponsor comes on board later this month.
India captain Harmanpreet Kaur known as the league a “game changer” for ladies’s cricket within the nation, constructing on the rising enthusiasm for the feminine recreation amongst Indian followers.
That enthusiasm was evident within the dwelling T20 collection towards Australia in December, which the vacationers received 4-1.
The opener on the DY Patil Stadium drew over 25,000 spectators, whereas greater than 47,000 turned up for the second match on the similar venue on the outskirts of Mumbai.
Although Australia have dominated girls’s cricket for the final 20 years, India have already got a strong base and received the inaugural U19 T20 World Cup in South Africa on Sunday.
“It’s just the beginning,” skipper Shafali Verma mentioned after they beat England within the closing in Potchefstroom.
“Women’s cricket may not become more popular than men’s cricket in India, but we certainly can hope to match them.”
For the remainder of the cricketing world, pleasure on the incomes potential for main gamers within the WPL comes tempered with considerations at a replication of India’s already overweening energy within the males’s recreation.
“There’s fear among a lot of players that once the women’s IPL starts, India is going to dominate world cricket,” Pune-born former Australia captain Lisa Sthalekar informed Cricinfo.
However, the worldwide governing physique of the game, the International Cricket Council, couldn’t be happier.
“India will continue to lead the way with regards to a lot of initiatives around women’s cricket,” ICC basic supervisor of cricket Wasim Khan informed media on Wednesday.
“The values that have been brought in for those (WPL) teams just reiterates how valuable and how important women’s cricket is and how it’s seen by the potential investors.”
Khan mentioned the WPL would set off a metamorphosis of your complete girls’s recreation over the following few years.
“We are very much confident that what’s happening in India was a catalyst to try and really drive the game to even greater levels,” he added.
“The combination of ourselves working with the cricket boards, we certainly believe that in five years’ time, the landscape is going to look very, very different.”
Source: www.perthnow.com.au
