WPL begins: Delhi Capitals’ captain Meg Lanning (L), Mumbai Indians’ captain Harmanpreet Kaur (2L), Royal Challengers Bangalore captain Smriti Mandhana (C), Gujarat Giants’ captain Beth Mooney (2R) and UP Warriorz captain Alyssa Healy (R) gesture through the opening ceremony of 2023 Women’s Premier League (WPL) on the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai on March 4, 2023.
| Photo Credit: INDRANIL MUKHERJEE
The inaugural version of the Women’s Premier League (WPL) is a end result of persistently superior T20 performances by ladies cricketers lately. In some T20 parameters, the efficiency of Indian ladies has matched or practically matched that of the Indian males’s crew lately. So, the WPL is not a token gesture to advertise equal illustration in cricket, but a hard-fought win for the exhibition of expertise.
Also, the WPL is not a spur-of-the-moment concept. It is the most recent transfer in a sequence of steps taken by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) within the current previous. In 2018, the BCCI began the Women’s T20 Challenge with two groups — Trailblazers and Supernovas — led by star Indian gamers Smriti Mandhana and Harmanpreet Kaur, respectively. The match was expanded to a few groups the following yr. In October 2022, the BCCI carried out a ‘pay equity policy’ for its contracted ladies cricketers and raised their match charge to match the charge of their male counterparts.
The quantity of T20 video games performed by Indian ladies has additionally elevated persistently over years and peaked within the newest season. In the 2022-23 season, India has already performed 23 worldwide T20 matches, the highest-ever. Chart 1 plots the quantity of worldwide T20 matches performed by India and all of the groups put collectively. Both curves had been on a near-vertical rise earlier than COVID-19. Post the peak-pandemic interval, the rise has continued. So, curiosity within the shorter format of the sport has clearly grown.
Charts seem incomplete? Click to take away AMP mode
Chart 2 plots the quantity of T20I matches performed by choose groups season-wise, on the vertical axis. For occasion, India has performed 23 T20Is within the 2022-23 season, probably the most throughout all of the groups in a season (the circle on high).
Chart 2 additionally plots the % of T20I wins (wins/matches) throughout choose groups season-wise on the horizontal axis. In the 2 seasons talked about above — 2022-23 and 2019-20 — India’s win % was 56% and 73%, respectively. On the opposite hand, the Australian crew received 92% of the matches performed within the 2022-23 season. England managed to win 9 out of the ten matches performed in the identical season. Given this, it was not stunning that many Australian and English gamers dominated the WPL public sale.
That being mentioned, Indian ladies have been persistently bettering their scoring price in T20s through the years. Chart 3 reveals the season-wise common runs per over (RPO) scored by Indian ladies’s and males’s groups in T20s. The hole within the RPO between the lads’s and the ladies’s groups has been persistently narrowing. In the final 4 seasons, India’s RPO in ladies’s T20 video games has been above seven.
An analogous pattern will be seen within the boundaries scored too. The hole within the boundaries scored per match between the Indian women and men in T20Is is quick closing as proven in Chart 4.
Moreover, the financial compensation that the WPL/IPL gives is a particular morale booster, particularly for Indian ladies. Smriti Mandhana’s public sale worth was 580% greater than her BCCI annual participant contract, whereas it was solely 114% extra within the case of Viral Kohli as proven in Table 5.
The WPL has additionally helped revive the careers of comparatively older gamers comparable to Saika Ishaque, who is at the moment topping the wicket charts within the match, although she is but to make an India debut. It has additionally helped youthful gamers comparable to Shefali Verma, who has at the moment hit probably the most sixes within the WPL, to ascertain their dominance and seal their place within the Indian crew.
vignesh.r@thehindu.co.in, rebecca.varghese@thehindu.co.in
Source: ESPNcricinfo’s Statusguru, Women’s Premier League web site, Indian Premier League web site, BCCI press releases
Also learn | Women’s Premier League: Beginning of new daybreak for India’s Gen-Next
Listen to our Data podcast: What decides ladies’s marital age — wealth, training or caste | Data Point podcast
