India women’s cricket team captain Harmanpreet Kaur said a Women’s IPL will be hugely beneficial for young domestic cricketers in the country to showcase their potential at the biggest stage, which in turn would benefit the senior national team.
Harmanpreet Kaur’s comments came after India won a silver medal in women’s cricket, which made its debut at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. India lost to Australia after dominating most of the thrilling final at Edgbaston on Sunday, August 7.
India women’s cricket team stars have been playing in overseas T20 leagues and the women’s T20 Challenge, a 3-team tournament that is held alongside the full-fledged men’s IPL.
“I think women’s IPL can be a big turning point for us. Our players do get opportunities to play overseas leagues. I feel, domestic players will get a great platform I women’s IPL. We have talented women’s cricketers in the country but many of them don’t have the experience of the big stages. Women’s IPL will be a great platform for them,” Harmanpreet Kaur told India Today.
Notably, the BCCI is all set to launch a full-fledged women’s IPL in 2023. Board secretary Jay Shah, earlier this year, said that the BCCI is committed to launching a women’s IPL next year.
‘REGULAR WICKETS COST US GOLD’
Meanwhile, Harmanpreet Kaur said winning a silver in the Commonwealth Games is a big achievement for the women’s cricket team, adding that losing wickets at regular intervals during the 162-run chase against eventual champions Australia cost them the Gold medal.
India were on course to chase down the total as they were 118 for 2 in the 15th over when Harmanpreet (65) and Jemimah Rodrigues (33) were involved in a 96-run stand for the third wicket.
However, India slipped from 118 for 2 to 152-all out, agonisingly losing another big final.
“The Silver medal is a big achievement. This is the first time we participated in the Commonwealth Games and it’s a big achievement,” she added.
“We created a situation from where we could have won the match but the last 4-5overs didn’t go the way we expected it to. But that’s the beauty of cricket – even if you think you’re in a good position, the game slips away from you. Today, it happened to us.
“Losing back-to-back wickets was the turning point. In that situation, if we had looked for singles and doubles other than looking for boundaries, we could have hit the big ones at the end with wickets in hand. We would have had less pressure. Runs came but we kept losing wickets at regular intervals,” Harmanpreet added.
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