Inter-school cricket in big cities
For the future of women’s cricket to be made safe and secure, a vicious effort to increase the number of girls playing cricket at the grassroots level is an utmost requirement. Most of the young girls don’t have the chance to play club cricket as the boys do, instead, they generally turn out for their respective state U-19 teams directly, if they have the talent to burst into life.
So a number of girls are lost in these process and don’t even have the right platform to develop their potential over a consistent period. If BCCI organises inter-school tennis-ball tournaments, at least in big urban centres initially, state associations will be handed an access to a demographic which may otherwise never play cricket, and schoolgirls will also love to grab the chance to play competitive cricket below the U-19 age group.
Mumbai Cricket Association have been conducting such a competition for the past seven years, and are now reaping the benefits of it, with some talented teenagers made it to the World T20 squad.