London: England women’s skipper Heather Knight has said it was amazing to see Ben Stokes speaking about having a full-fledged Women’s Indian Premier League (WIPL) to further enhance the women’s game.
Knight has also agreed that an IPL equivalent tournament would go a long way, and she praised Stokes for speaking out in support of women’s cricket.
It was awesome to see Stokesy talk about the women’s IPL. The more allies we have in women’s cricket, it really helps to change perceptions. It’s great from Ben to say that and I totally agree, I think it would be amazing for the women’s game to have an IPL,” ESPNcricinfo quoted her as saying. “You’ve seen it in Australia with the Big Bash, and hopefully here with the Hundred having men’s and women’s competitions alongside each other, it’s a really positive thing for the women’s game and really helps to progress things. It was really nice to see Ben make those comments, she added.
Earlier, Stokes had said that the time has come to launch a full-fledged Women’s IPL and he was very hopeful of seeing women’s franchises being established. Yes, I think the women’s game, especially over the last four to five years, has gone from strength to strength and it’s great how it is filtering into the men’s game in terms of [parallel] competitions and things like that, Stokes had said on Red Bull’s Decoding Athletes podcast.
I’m very hopeful there’ll be a women’s franchise side associated with every men’s franchise side so we’re able to grow the women’s game even bigger. What better place to do it than out here in India,’ he added. Since 2018, the BCCI has staged the Women’s T20 Challenge to run alongside the men’s IPL playoffs. Initially it featured two teams but then it was expanded to three — Trailblazers, Supernovas and Velocity — in 2019 and 2020.