WPL 2024: Smriti Mandhana bats for IPL-like multi-city format in Women's Premier League

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Bengaluru, Dec 5: Ahead of the Women's Premier League (WPL) 2024 Auction, Royal Challengers Bangalore women's team captain Smriti Mandhana wants the league to take a leaf out of its counterpart IPL and adopt a multi-city format for the WPL.

Mandhana, vice-captain of the Indian women's cricket team, shared her viewpoint while speaking at the RCB Innovation Lab's Leaders Meet India in Bengaluru last week saying the move will fetch a new audience to women's cricket in the country.

WPL Should Have Multi-City Format: Smriti Mandhana

The IPL which has become the most lucrative and richest franchise-based domestic T20 tournament in the world has been played in a multi-city format since its inception. The league, which started with eight teams and has now been extended to ten, is played in home and away format right from the start.

Mandhana - the stylish left-handed batter from Mumbai - while reflecting on the success of the WPL, expressed enthusiasm for the prospect of adopting a multi-city format.

"It would be great to have WPL in the multi-city format. I think that might be the next step and I am sure the people right here would look into it and make it happen. As an RCB fan, I would love to play in Chinnaswamy where people are chanting 'RCB RCB' and just to be in that environment.

"That is something which is one step ahead for us that it (multi-city format) can reach to places where women's cricket hasn't reached and to get new audience going into women's cricket," Mandhana commented.

Smriti Mandhana Addresses RCB Innovation Lab's Leaders Meet India

The RCB Innovation Lab's Leaders Meet India is the first-of-its-kind summit that brought together influential leaders from various industries to delve into the future of sports.

The 27-year-old claimed that the RCB Innovation Lab's Leaders Meet India was a much-needed platform to understand how different business people look at sports as a platform to generate digital numbers. She even claimed that the event should happen more often to interact with other sports icons and business top brass.

The highly-anticipated WPL 2024 Auction will be held on December 9 in Mumbai and will see a total of 165 members going under the hammer. A total of 30 female cricketers, including 9 overseas, can be brought by the five franchises.

WPL 2024 Auction Planning and Strategy

Ahead of the WPL auction, Mandhana revealed the importance of a conducive environment that the franchise has prepared and she will prioritise the time she spends with the team.

"A lot of thoughts have gone into what kind of combinations we need in terms of releases or retention. So we are really looking forward to the WPL auctions and hopefully, we get the players who we are looking forward to getting," added Mandhana.

Speaking on the growth of women's sports in India, Mandhana highlighted the remarkable achievements of women athletes in recent years across various sports and disciplines. Women athletes are winning medals at multi-sporting events, and are inspiring a generation of girls in smaller cities to dream big.

Smriti Mandhana Hails Women Athletes In India

She emphasised the cultural shift, saying, "Women in India are doing amazing stuff in the last five to 10 years not only in women's cricket but in women's sport in general. If you see the last Olympics or Commonwealth or Asian Games, the kind of medals women's athletes have gone and got for the country is a big inspiration for a lot of smaller city girls out there to pursue their passion.

"I think women's sports in general should be treated separately and by doing that they can definitely sell a lot of things in terms of the ticketing or the digital rights."

Time To Focus On Grassroots Level: Mandhana

Mandhana - who grew up in Maharashtra's Sangli district - claimed the focus should be on the development of young cricket at the grassroots level when asked about the areas women's cricket needs in terms of further investment or further focus to keep propelling forward.

She remarked, "The only thing that we could invest in is the grassroots level of women's sport in general because a lot of interest is developed with the Indian Women's team or the WPL tournament. Invest more so that we get a lot more cricketers women cricketers."

The BCCI and the IPL Governing Council are yet to announce the date and schedule for the upcoming WPL 2024, the second season of the competition. The tournament is most likely to happen between mid-February and mid-March. It will be interesting to see if Mandhana's multi-city opinion gets the board's backing.