Over the last few years, Women’s cricket has scaled unimaginable heights. Even the recently concluded Women’s T20 World Cup final attracted a huge amount of audience. Around 86,000 fans were present in the MCG to witness the pinnacle event of Women’s cricket. Now the only thing remaining for Women’s cricket to achieve is a possible Women’s IPL. In her latest Interview with Harsha Bhogle in Cricbuzz, the Indian T20 captain Harmanpreet Kaur touched upon the importance of the Women’s IPL and she named the player that would fetch the highest amount in the auction.
Women’s IPL is something that had been talked about at great lengths in the past few years. Many popular names in the cricket field like Harsha Bhogle and Harmanpreet Kaur had been very vocal about the need to start the tournament as soon as possible.
In his latest Cricbuzz in Conversation episode, famous cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle asked Harmanpreet Kaur to name one player that would fetch the highest amount if an IPL auction was to take place today.
Women’s cricket already has so many superstars in Smriti Mandhana, Shafali Verma, Ellyse Perry Allysa Healy, etc. But the name Harman suggested was that of South African batter Lizelle Lee.
Harman justified her choice by saying that Lizelle is someone who is capable of scoring a hundred in every match and added that she is not just a hard hitter but is someone who has a great understanding of the shortest format of the game.
Harman clarified that her choice was purely considering the fact the tournament will be of T20 format. She also added that as far as Indian players are concerned Smriti Mandhana and Shafali Verma would attract huge bids.
“I would have Smriti and Shafali in my side rather than playing against them,” said Harmanpreet.
In the bowling department, she suggested the name of Poonam Yadhav as someone who could fetch huge amounts. She added that she would want to have Poonam in her team at any cost and as she is someone who is well suited to bowl in the shortest format of the game.
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Throughout the interview, Harmanpreet stressed on the importance of the Women’s IPL and put forward the benefits that it would possibly bring to the Indian team. Despite featuring in the finals of the last two out of three major World Tournaments Indian Women’s team hasn’t been able to hold their hands on the silverware.
Harman who led India in two of those three occasions opined that it was purely due to the fact that the Indian girls lacked the experience of playing in high-pressure knockout matches. With the Women’s domestic tournaments in India being less competitive and the girls being fast-tracked directly from there to a completely different and competitive International stage, they either find themselves in a dilemma or fade away quickly.
She also talked about the influence the Women’s Big Bash had on her. She added that these kinds of tournaments wherein you get to share the dressing room with some of the finest players of the game comes in as a huge learning curve and that is what she expects a possible Women’s IPL could do to the young Indian girls.
To start off with she suggested it to be a 6 team tournament and requested the public to wait patiently for a year or so as it won’t be a huge success upon arrival, unlike the men’s IPL. She added that the quality of the tournament will increase upon the second or third year and would help in producing more young talents like Shafali Verma.
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