Smriti Mandhana vouches for a six-team IPL in the country

Talented Indian batswoman, Smriti Mandhana said that there is enough depth in the Indian cricketing circuit to introduce six teams for women’s Indian Premier League. She also highlighted that by doing this, the bench strength of the team can also be improved. 

“There are the same number of states for men and women. So, when they started the men’s IPL, there were the same number of states. But the quality went higher and higher as the years passed by,” said the 25-year-old batter on Ravichandran Ashwin’s Youtube channel. 

IPL has greatly helped the men’s Indian cricket team to improve the quality of players. Twenty20 gives a larger platform to people from different states who might have been doing great jobs in the domestic circuit but somehow did not get an opportunity in the national position, asserted Mandhana, who captained her team to victory last in the last IPL edition. 

She stressed that whatever IPL has become today, it was not always like that a decade ago but slowly hig improved and the same will happen for the women’s circuit also. The cricketer also was confident about having five to six teams to start with and then slowly the success will help in growing these teams to eight teams. 

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There should be proper conduct when it comes to the league matches and Mandhana seems to have stressed on it as well. She said when playing in a league format, these women can get the right kind of exposure, which will contribute towards opening a lot more doors for them.

Even though she was optimistic about the whole idea, the young cricketer was also realistic when it came to expecting eight teams from the domestic circuit. According to her, five-six teams were easy to make but when it comes to eight teams, she was still unsure how that would turn out. 

One of the best cricketers of the country, Mandhana, also plays for Big Bash League and she stressed that this has helped increase the bench strength of the Australian team. This is something India can definitely get inspired from, the cricketer said. 

“You can see that in Cricket Australia where they have 40-50 cricketers ready to play international cricket any day,” she said. As of now, the Board of Cricket Council of India hosts a Women’s T20 Challenge which features merely three teams–Trailblazers, Supernovas and Velocity.