India’s prominent women’s cricketer Jemimah Rodrigues regards women’s Indian Premier League as a big talent hunt platform for team India. She believes that IPL can help the national cricket team to find the match-winning players.
Citing the example of England and Australia, who organise T20 tournaments for women, Rodrigues said that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) should focus on hosting a full-fledged women’s IPL to get newer talent and develop the game in India.
“If you see the Big Bash and the Kia Super League have developed the game out there so much for Australia, England and now even New Zealand has started. That’s (IPL) definitely going to develop the game and it’s also going to get newer talent,” Rodrigues said on ICC’s ‘100% Cricket’.
We came to know about Shafali Verma through the IPL: Jemimah Rodrigues
Shafali Verma, who played significant knocks for India in the ICC women’s T20 World Cup 2020, first hogged the eye after his stint for IPL team Velocity. Last year, She became the youngest cricketer to play for India. Like Shafali, Rodrigues believes that India can get more such talents if given a platform to showcase their talent.
“We came to know about Shafali Verma through the IPL, she did so well in the IPL. We knew she could do well in the domestic circuit but after that playing against international players and being that fearless person we can get many more talents rising up playing such matches,” Jemimah Rodrigues said.
The BCCI has hosted women’s IPL exhibition matches in the last two years but has said a full-fledged tournament will take some time to take shape.
The Indian Board had decided to organise a four-team Women’s T20 Challenge to run parallel to the men’s IPL playoffs with a total of seven matches to be played.