Why doesn't India have a women's IPL?

Shabaash Mithu, the Mithali Raj biopic is an entertaining film. Not quite perhaps as well made as 83, but it still has reasonable drama, lots of cricket and it climaxes in an authentic World Cup clash. Taapsee Pannu has turned in a stellar performance. The story is a bit stretched but all in all, the biopic is well worth a watch.

Unfortunately, the box office collections look like they will fall short of even the Rs 2-crore mark in the first week, making the movie a super flop. Wonder why. The M S Dhoni biopic did smashing business, grossing Rs 216 crore at the box office. Despite being declared a lukewarm hit, 83 collected Rs 194 crore at the ticket counters. So, a cricket movie doing terribly is really bad news.

Is the flop-show because we Indians have little or no interest in eves’ cricket? Let’s examine. In the actual World Cup featured in Shabaash Mithu, worldwide viewing hours went up from 55.9 million to 113.5 million, a 103 per cent jump compared to the previous edition. Seventy-six per cent of this global viewing was from India. The final, which saw Australia thrash India, was the most-watched match in the series with 53 million tuning in. In addition to the television figures, there were more than a billion views on the International Cricket Council’s (ICC’s) digital channels, 20 times the number recorded in the previous World Cup.

In comparison, the men’s Cricket World Cup 2019 live coverage reached a global cumulative average audience of 1.6 billion viewers — 14 times the size of the audience for the women’s edition. A stark difference, for sure.

Is that also the reason that despite the thundering success of the IPL, which in 2022 entered its 15th year, there is no women’s version of the IPL? Is the audience for the ladies IPL too tiny, in fact minuscule? Are there not enough sponsors ready to back the girls? Or is there more to it?

A biggie-wiggie cricket administrator once told me that more than audiences or sponsors, the real problem is that there are not enough quality players available to make six or eight teams of 16 each for a viable league to be created. The Women’s T20 Challenge as an Indian women’s cricket Twenty20 tournament was first held in 2018. The tournament featured three teams, playing a round-robin group followed by a final. In March 2022, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced that a franchise-based annual T20 tournament for women cricketers will be started from 2023, replacing the Women’s T20 Challenge. The tournament will contain six teams and will be referred to as the Women’s IPL. But to be honest, the chances of the tournament being launched look pretty grim. BCCI President Sourav Ganguly has himself gone on record lamenting the lack of a talent pool. 

There are other problems too. The women’s team did not play a single match for an entire year after the 2020 World Cup final. The pandemic can only be partly blamed because male cricketers played innumerable matches throughout the year, including the IPL. There is also no nationals Under-16 women’s tournament in India or a programme that hunts for girl cricketers at an early age.

Cricket Australia (CA) launched the Women’s Big Bash League in the 2015-16 season. Eight teams were unveiled — the same teams which had been taking part in the Men’s Big Bash League since the 2011-12 season. Both in Australia and in England, for a men’s team in the league, there is a women’s team as well. There’s a Sydney Sixers men’s and women’s team and likewise, there is a men’s and women’s team of London Spirits.

If the BCCI were to have a women’s IPL, there are two ways to get the teams and both have their own challenges. One way is to ask the existing franchisees to each have a women’s team. The franchisees may or may not agree — they are currently raking in the moolah big time because of the record sale of broadcast rights, but may still not want to incur the cost of a women’s team where returns will be considerably lower, or maybe even negative. The second solution for the BCCI is to sell the women’s franchise teams separately. Which may be somewhat messy. For CA it was much easier as all the teams are owned by the Australian board and not by individual franchises.

The Indian ladies team’s title sponsor is Byju’s. Dream 11, Lafarge-Holcim and Hyundai are the official partners. The title sponsorship rights of the Women’s T20 Challenge 2022 were bagged by My11Circle. Somehow the likes of Hindustan Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Reckitt Benckiser, Godrej, L’Oreal, Tanishq and others who invest so much into tom-toming women empowerment spend almost nothing to support women’s cricket. The brand Lever chose to back women’s cricket was not Lux or Pond’s or Sunsilk but Boost! That says it all. 

The writer is managing director of Rediffusion