Smriti Mandhana bats for Women’s IPL with 5-6 teams

Indian star Smriti Mandhana has called for a women’s edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) with 5-6 teams. Mandhana reckons this would surely help Indian women’s cricket to reach the next level. She feels that it will strengthen the bench of the Indian women’s team in the future.

During a chat with India men’s cricket superstar Ravichandran Ashwin on his YouTube channel, Mandhana opined that currently, an eight-team tournament looks far from reality, but with five or six teams, the women’s version of IPL can get started.

“Five-six teams, we are good to go with. But eight teams, I am still not sure how it will look like. But I think we really need to start with five or six teams so that we can actually get to eight teams very soon,” Madhana told Ashwin.

“I think till we don’t start, we are not giving exposure to our girls to turn their cricket into a really different level,” she added.

The Mumbai-born cricketer gave an example of the Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL) and said how it has changed Australian women’s cricket. Mandhana explained that she played in the tournament four years ago, and now the quality of the competition is quite different. The left-handed batter wished to see similar thing taking place in Indian women’s cricket as well.

“I played in Big Bash four years back, and now the quality is very different. You can see that in Cricket Australia, where they have 40-50 cricketers ready to play international cricket any day. So, I really want that to happen in Indian cricket. I think IPL will play a huge role in that,” Mandhana added further.

Mandhana recently played in the inaugural edition of The Hundred. She was a part of team Southern Brave in the 100-ball competition. In seven matches, Mandhana scored 167 runs with the help of two half-centuries.

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