The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is planning to stage the Men’s U-19 domestic tournament in the months of June-July this year. All the junior tournaments of the Board were suspended citing covid earlier. But in a fresh letter to all associations, Sourav Ganguly the President of the Board has informed the future plans.
The shocking part is that after ignoring the women’s cricket developments in both the domestic and international circuits for a long time during the first wave of Covid-19 and afterwards, the BCCI has no plans for streamlining the women’s domestic structure.
“In this season, the BCCI has endeavoured to organize as much domestic cricket as possible. We are further looking to host the U-19 domestic season for men in the month of June/July 2021, subject to any Covid related disruption,” Sportstar quoted the letter written by Ganguly to all Associations.
Although in his letter Ganguly says that “All international and domestic players deserve immense credit for staying in a bio-secure environment for such a long period of time and yet delivering such high quality and wonderful cricket,” there is no mention of whether or not women’s cricket will follow suit as far as domestic tournaments are concerned.
There is long-pending demand for hosting a full-scale IPL style competition for women. But forget that, there is no information on whether the Women’s Challenger tournament involving three sides, staged every IPL season for the past three seasons during the Playoffs, will be played this season or not.
Also, the men’s team did a tour of Australia and had England coming over alongside domestic T20 and 50 over competitions, the women have had just one international series since the T20 World Cup in Australia and domestically too, only the senior Women’s tournament of the 50 over has been the only competition that they have played.