THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Board of Control for Cricket in India has planned a Future Tours Programme for women cricketers with a focus on ODIs and T20s.
Speaking at the 40th National Convention of the Sports Journalists’ Federation of India, BCCI general manager Ratnakar Shetty said, “We are now planning to have a FTP at the international level like the men’s team for ODIs and T20s and that is working out well. Don’t go by the quantity of matches but go by the fact that we will be playing better teams in the next two years and our girls will get a chance to compete at that level.”
Shetty, who holds additional charge of the women’s game, said that the BCCI has restructured women’s cricket at the junior level and plans to have an U-16 tournament at the zonal level. “So this year we will have zonal tournament for U-16. We already have a U-19 tournament and we have U-23 where they play One-day games and this year onwards they will play T20. We have a senior women’s tournament where we have one-day games, three-day games and T20s. The U-19 girls also play two day games, so this is the structure we have decided for women’s cricket under BCCI,” he added.
Shetty said that women’s cricket, that came under BCCI in 2006, has seen a lot of progress in the last 11 years in terms of facilities that are available for girls, even at the state level and the BCCI level. Every country and ICC is first interested in creating a base for women’s cricket for promotion of the game in all the nations which play cricket, a PTI report quotes Shetty as saying.
“Therefore the focus is only on limited overs cricket, the ODIs and T20s. In the ODI World Cup in England recently, the girls played some outstanding cricket and suddenly there was a lot of enthusiasm among the journalist fraternity which was not seen earlier. And because of the matches being shown on television, girls like Mithali (Raj) became a household name, and someone like Harmanpreet (Kaur) is equivalent to a men’s cricketer and that gives us great joy,” he added.
Picture courtesy: indianexpress.com
