6 TALKING POINTS FROM IPL T20 WOMEN’S CHALLENGE

2^nd version of IPL T20 Women’s Challenge Cup concluded with a new Winner. Here are 6 talking points from the tournament: 3 positive and 3 negative.
  

Image By- ICC

The IPL T20 Women’s Challenge Cup was introduced in 2018 to increase the popularity of women’s cricket more in India after Indian female cricket team caught everyone’s attention at Women’s World Cup 2017. 3 years of the IPL Women’s Challenge Cup with only 3 teams is also being seen as the dress rehearsal of the full fledged IPL for Women’s Cricket with greater number of teams, just like Women’s Big Bash League in Australia.

The most recent season saw Trailblazers defeating Supernovas, the winner of the last two versions, in the Final to get hold of the trophy. Here we present a brief close look to this version of the tournament.

 

Positives:

Atapattu of Supernovas | Image by- iplt20.com

1. Batting firepower in top order: Except the 2^nd match, which saw Velocity batting order collapse in the 1^st order, top order of teams has shown some real ball hitting capabilities. Trailblazers with Mandhana and Dottin in opening; Supernova with Athaptthu and Velocity with Shefali Verma shown that Women’s cricketers can also get runs with high rate in powerplays and set the base for a quite big total like 165-175 to even 190. Sri Lankan legend Athapatthu has surely been the best batswoman of the tournament.

Jhulan, Ecclestone, Rajeshwari| Image By- iplt20.com

2. Bowling: Normally bowling is more dominant in Women’s cricket than it is in Men’s cricket. Bowling again caught the eye in this season of Women’s IPL. Mainly, after stormy starts in powerplays by the batters, bowlers show great potential, control and calmness to hold back runs. Group stage matches, mainly the last one between Supernovas and Trailbazers, seen impressive death bowling, Radha Yadav defending only 10 runs in the final over. She went on to take 5 wickets in the final, the first ever in the competition, and winning the Player of the Tournament award. World T20’s no. 1 Sophie Ecclestone, bowling legend Jhulan Goswami, Jahanara Alam impressed as always along with Rajeshwari Gayakwad, Ekta Bisht, Kasparek.

Nattakan Chantham| Image by-  iplt20.com

3. Fielding: Well, sparked the name of Nattakan Chantham right now inside your brain! Yep, tremendous fielder she is. Not just her, throughout the whole season, some promising fielding is seen. Some misfields and one or two dropper catches were also there but boundary fielding and some catches been exceptional one. This has surely been a very promising sign.

 Apart from this, this season of Women’s IPL witnessed some quality all-round play. Deepti Sharma is obviously been the leader there. Harleen Deol is the find of the season for Indian Cricket. Her admirably good all-round play won her the Rising Star of the Tournament award. Participation from so called backward countries in Cricket and teams backing them to get good results is also a huge good sign.

 

 

Negatives:

1. Middle order batting:  Biggest failure of the season, truly. Only except the 1^st match when Veda Krishnamurthy, Sushma Verma and Sune Luus won Velocity the match, middle order of every team has fall apart most of the time. Only Harmanpreet Kaur has shown solidity in middle order batting times and again. Other than that, sometimes they messed up a real good start and sometimes failed to show some resistance when team suffered some early blow. Finishing is been well and truly very poor.

2. Lack of experience and no innings planning: Ok, it’s really sad that we are saying this till now. Women’s cricket has moved on to such distance and there is no lacking in experienced players in each team of the tournament. But any proper planning to build an innings, to get to a proper good total has hardly been seen out there. Senior players must take more responsibilities and share their huge experience with the youngsters to groom them. Well, I must admit here, this doesn’t apply in bowling department every time. In many a times they have shown they have very proper planning with them, just like Supernovas bowlers bowling wide to Dottin in the final.

3. Lack of adaptability: This is also for batting department mainly. Be it game situation or pitch condition, very few batters showed notable adaptability. And whenever the bowlers have brought in any plan, they showed less creativity to counter that. Batting mainly has been one way traffic for most of the batters. Biggest problem comes in, when they again and again failed to counter the slow bowling strategy of the bowlers. Most of the wickets being lost due slowness of bowling, still players has gone for shots in the air knowing that they couldn’t clear the rope, the opted for rough powered shots rather than placement and timing.

 

 

So, what this sums up to is that, bowling is been phenomenal but batting, though coming with lots of potential and promises, seems to be fragile. Well yep, you can’t be much harsh on them, as they are playing their first of matches after more than half an year.  But what we can say is that, with a bit of good brain work and planned cricket, we can see the Women’s IPL becoming as intriguing as the Men’s IPL. And as the viewership is increasing with high rate, we are may be very near to witness the 1^st full fledged women’s IPL. So, fingers crossed.

 

 

An Article By: Arpan Purkait