Women's IPL To Feature Five Teams In March 2023 Inaugural Edition

The proposed plan by BCCI is set to include a total of twenty-two matches in the Indian Premier League women's edition. Each team squad, according to the proposition, will include a total of eighteen players, featuring a maximum of six overseas players. According to the rules, the playing XI cannot include more than five overseas players. The plan has been forwarded to all the state associations in the country to start the process.

While the BCCI is still holding its decision to decide the length of the tournament, it has planned out the series play and the final games eliminators process. Every team will get to play each other twice in the IPL league and the top side in either group will be qualifying for the finals directly. An eliminator may be in place for the qualification of the second and third-ranked teams for the finals respectively. The BCCI has charted two plans for the league, where the central cricket body itself will be seeing the teams in two formats. In the first scenario, the team will be sold across six zones in the country. The league authorities have mapped a set of cities in every zone comprising of North Zone (Dharamsala and Jammu), South Zone (Kochi and Visakhapatnam), West Zone (Pune and Rajkot), East Zone (Ranchi and Cuttack), North East Zone (Guwahati), and Central Zone (Indore, Nagpur and Raipur). The second chart includes teams getting sold without solid home bases. The matches will be played in the six shortlisted playing venues including Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai, Bengaluru and Ahmedabad.

The proposed plan will be presented at the Annual General Meeting in the coming week and the final stamp will be given by the IPL Governing council for the same. While final plans are still left to be mapped, it's certainly a direction we have long been waiting for in women's cricket.