How women's T20 leagues are shaping both disparity and development

In August 2024, a discussion unfolded between two Pakistani cricket administrators about women's cricket. What began as an engaging exchange of thoughts and ideas took an intriguing turn when they unexpectedly reached common ground: that India, Australia, and England play far too often among themselves, leaving women players from other teams sidelined.

Considering the World Championship schedules, there isn't a significant disparity in the number of matches played by Full Member nations. And if certain boards choose to invest in Test cricket, it can hardly be held against them. The frustration, however, stemmed less from the additional international fixtures and more from the disproportionately high number of invitations extended to players from these specific countries to participate in their respective leagues.

The assessment is true to an extent, but not entirely. Deandra Dottin, Stafanie Taylor, and Hayley Matthews of the West Indies have repeatedly found interest from leagues across the world. So have South Africa's Marizanne Kapp and Shabnim Ismail, New Zealand's Sophie Devine and Amelia Kerr, and Sri Lanka's Chamari Athapaththu.

On the contrary, only one cricketer from Pakistan, Nida Dar, has ever received an invite to feature in one of the three premier foreign leagues - the WBBL in 2019. Even players from Ireland, Scotland and USA have found more takers. The fact that players from Pakistan have been repeatedly ignored has not escaped their attention.

Here's the player participation breakdown in the top three women's leagues over the years (till the start of WPL 2025):

The reasons for such inequality are understandable. There are limited slots available for overseas players in each of these leagues, as a result of which certain players get opportunities to play in multiple leagues while most others get none at all. Even if they do get picked by franchises, especially in the WPL, it leads to a situation where even some of the best players in the world don't get opportunities to feature in the XI. It happened with Shabnim Ismail warming the bench for most of UP Warriorz's inaugural season, and the next season with Annabel Sutherland for Delhi Capitals. South African all-rounder Chloe Tryon, who has been a part of Mumbai Indians' setup since the inaugural season, is yet to play a game for them. So what is the chance that the best from Pakistan, Fatima Sana for example, could get that opportunity?

On many occasions, depending on the depth of domestic reserves available in their respective countries, the demand for overseas players is gauged. As a result, while pace-bowling all-rounders like South Africa's Marizanne Kapp and West Indies' Deandra Dottin might end up getting interest from all leagues, specialist pacers without batting skills like Australia's Megan Schutt and Darcie Brown often struggle to attract the same demand.

The primary advantage of having these leagues is to help the domestic players rub shoulders with some of the best players from around the world and level up their game. Australia, who were the frontrunners with a women's league, took advantage of that development and have reached a stage wherein some of the players who don't even make their national squad find takers in international leagues. They have become the global leaders in shaping the advancement of gameplay, and countries like England, India and West Indies have tried to follow suit, hoping for similar results.

At this point in world cricket, strong players and players from stronger teams are getting more opportunities to improve their game, separating the top-tier from the rest of the pack. It's a concern that Dottin raised when she was asked about the one lesser-spoken issue in women's cricket.

"Some teams are more privileged than others," she said. "You will see (players in) Australia, England, and India being equally paid. They're not equally paid, but it's basically a low-budget kind of a thing. Then there are some (in other countries) that have to take a bus with their gear to go to training. They're not as fortunate, but they have the love and the passion for the game.

"Travelling to Australia, England, and India and getting to know different personalities from the players really has helped me. Having to be among the other players (in WPL, WBBL and the Hundred), playing alongside them from different countries, is a privilege. You actually sit and learn from them. Even without picking their mind, you just watch how they go about their game. Just try to take a couple of things from them. Sometimes, you will have a conversation with them and see where their headspace is."

The privileges that she talks about are more than just knowledge-capital sharing. These leagues expose players to better pitches, better outfields, and in the case of WPL, even significantly bigger crowds with higher financial compensation. There are also opportunities for more earning, which invariably also leads to access to better training and better nutrition. In recent years, a few players - including Dottin for a brief while - have grudgingly opted to take the freelance route given the financial and quality game-time opportunities available with overseas leagues.

Only a few minutes before Dottin had expressed her concern, Gujarat Giants head coach Michael Klinger had highlighted that the disparity between the haves and have-nots of women's cricket may get worse. "It's probably going to happen even more because there's now a window," Klinger assessed. "Previously, you'd have some periods, like say for WBBL, where the Indian players weren't available, the South African players weren't available, or they were available for half the season and then you could get other players in. There were more opportunities for not just the same ones coming back all the time, who are perceived as the best players around the world.

"In theory, now with the windows for the three tournaments, as long as those same players want to play all three and not have a break, then there's probably a decent chance that you'll see very much the same players coming back, it might increase that gulf. I suppose there will always be potentially another couple of competitions outside of those three where there will be opportunities for players who might have missed out."

On the contrary, Jon Lewis, the head coach of UP Warriorz and the England women's team, is of the view that having limited seats for foreign players in leagues will fuel ambition and intensify competition. "I think it's really healthy competition, to be honest. It creates ambition and competition. Every time you have competition in anything, it drives development. For me, competition is a really strong way of developing players around the world.

"It opens their eyes to the standards that's required to be a franchise overseas cricketer. If you're picked and selected to be a franchise overseas cricketer and you're playing in the XI, you're one of the best cricketers in the world. So your ambition as a young cricketer or an old cricketer should be always to be one of the best cricketers in the world. In these types of competitions, some senior overseas players are dominating because they're able to perform consistently. If the players that are underneath that group start to perform more consistently, they will break into that group and they'll knock someone else out."

One of the biggest reasons why this disparity in playing-time in the leagues continues, apart from the window reserved for these leagues, is the limited investment from a number of boards. The supply highly outweighs the demand at this point, ensuring each country's league benefits their own players and only the cream of foreign talent.

While this disparity between the haves and have-nots of women's cricket is concerning, leagues like WPL have also unexpectedly helped domestic players from struggling teams evolve at a much faster rate, and helped bridge some of the talent gaps in women's cricket.

The best way to understand the impact of these leagues is by shedding light on what even the worst-performing team is able to offer to the cricketing system. In the case of WPL, Gujarat Giants become an easy pick to inspect - a team that has finished at the bottom of the points table in the first two seasons, registering only four wins across 16 games.

Unintentionally, it has created a situation wherein even as teams like Mumbai Indians and Delhi Capitals dominate the league, franchises like Gujarat Giants, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, and UP Warriorz, by force more than choice, have provided more exposure to uncapped domestic players, throwing them into high-pressure situations and accelerating their development.

In fact, the number of matches a team won in the league phase of the first two seasons of WPL is inversely proportional to the involvement of the uncapped Indian players - in terms of balls faced or balls bowled.

Role of uncapped Indians in WPL 2023 and 2024

A closer look at the table shows how the uncapped Indian batters of UP Warriorz ended up facing more than twice the number of deliveries than their counterparts in any other team. Similarly, the uncapped Indian bowlers of Gujarat Giants delivered more balls than their counterparts from Mumbai Indians, Delhi Capitals, and UP Warriorz combined.

This wasn't a deliberate plan but a byproduct of poor auction strategy and underwhelming performances from overseas players leading to team inconsistencies. However, the impact is undeniable. Many of these domestic players have transitioned to higher levels of the game faster than expected. The WPL, in particular, has fast-tracked several players into the Indian team, with the likes of Saika Ishaque, Kanika Ahuja, Shreyanka Patil, S Sajana and S Asha being among 11 players who made their India debuts after impressing in the tournament. While their elevation to the national side wasn't solely due to their WPL performances, it was in this league that they demonstrated their ability to challenge some of the best players in the world.

"There's no more proof of that than with the Gujarat Giants in the last 12 months," Klinger said proudly. "We didn't have a great season last year, but I know for a fact as I was here and helping deal with the other coaches is I really feel we're developing the players, and we've put a premium on individual development and also around trying to expose them to conditions that they're going to get at the top level. I think we had six or seven in the India A squad and another five playing for India who weren't playing previously in the last 12 months.

"I'd love to be winning trophies and doing that, don't get me wrong, and we've still got a chance to do that this year. But if we can, if teams are doing both, then they're nailing it."

Lewis, who has coached UP Warriorz since the inaugural season, takes a different view on his stint with the team that failed to make it to the final in the first two seasons. "First and foremost, that (player development) is the purpose of the competition. We obviously want to win. That's like a prerequisite in sport. But there's a lot of stuff outside of cricket that is around developing the awareness of women's cricket, in particular in India, and women's cricket around the world. If women's cricket grows in India, then women's cricket around the world grows, It can only make it a healthier place.

"And then the other part of that is obviously around selecting young Indian players to try and help develop them. Again, it makes women's cricket around the globe stronger. I've been really impressed with the strides that they (domestic Indian cricketers) have made and are taking and moving their games forward. It hasn't yet come to fruition in terms of consistent on-field performances. But that will come in time. By establishing a core group of young Indian players to potentially build upon in the future is something that we've been trying to do. And we feel like we're definitely moving those players forward.

"Development of cricket players takes an inordinate amount of time, especially ones that are between the age of 18 and 22, which most of our young batters are. So that takes a long, long time for them to do because they don't play as frequently as the men do. Over time, you'll see the players that will benefit and Indian cricket will benefit from what we're doing."

The gap between the level of skill at the domestic level and the international level in all countries is massive. T20 leagues have become an important platform to bridge that gap, and WPL has shown that even struggling franchises serve a vital role. However, barring Australia, England, India and West Indies, no other board has taken a step towards starting its own league. Australia have completed 10 editions of WBBL already, and their consistent domination of international cricket is proof of the inherent value.

England have had leagues (Super League and The Hundred) for women running since 2015, but a few other boards have relied more on boastful claims without concrete action. For example, former PCB chairman Ramiz Raja announced the desire to make Pakistan the first Asian country to have a women's league in 2021. Since then, neither has anything materialised nor is anything in the pipeline for the near future. Similarly, the Bangladesh Cricket Board had planned a league for 2025, but backed out at the last moment.

The fact that teams like New Zealand and South Africa reached the final of the 2024 T20 World Cup can give a false impression that they are the best teams in the world despite not having a league. But in reality, Australia continue to dominate the rankings in both ODIs and T20Is, with India and England taking the next two positions.

The need for leagues is far more urgent for boards like Pakistan and Bangladesh, whose players are not only among the worst-paid women athletes from Full Member nations but have also lacked opportunities in foreign leagues. They are placed 8th and 9th respectively in T20I rankings, and 10th and 8th in ODIs.

Boards with greater funds and intentional administrators willing to drive the growth of women's cricket have generated avenues for better players, and players from more privileged cricketing countries have been able to build the platform, but the rest have been left behind. It's created a gulf between the haves and the have-nots that's only going to widen unless more countries take steps to build their own leagues.