New Delhi: Legendary skipper of the Indian women’s cricket team Mithali Raj has said that the COVID-19 forced break will affect performances. Mithali Raj said that the COVID-19 pandemic may have pushed back the growth of women’s cricket by two years.
Mithali is Indian women’s ODI team captain. She is the world’s highest run-getter in 50-over cricket. She said that a full-fledged women’s IPL is still at least three years away.
“Unfortunately, women’s cricket may have been set back by a couple of years by this pandemic. Some of the momentum that had been built between India’s success in World Cup (2017) and World T20 (2020) has been lost. It will take some time recover,” the 37-year-old Mithali said during a webinar.
Also read: Mithali Raj calls time on her T20 international career
Mithali said that she had had talks with the BCCI brass with regards to a dedicated calendar for the women’s national team.
“We have had discussions with BCCI to draw up a firm calendar for the Indian women’s team. It will enable fans to regularly cheer for the team,” Mithali said.
“The plans have obviously been disrupted but we believe we can re-build quickly. I think a full-fledged Women’s IPL is still 2-3 years away. However, we would certainly look to have a fourth team in the Women’s Challenge that is played concurrently with the IPL,” said one of the game’s icons.
During the webinar, DG (SAI) Sandip Pradhan said that the emphasis will be to present India’s indigenous sports in a new avatar, which will ‘further open up opportunities for Indian start-ups’.
Pradhan spoke about re-setting the priorities. “Being physical while leveraging digital is the new normal. So we need to re-set, re-invent and re-work our priorities,” Pradhan said.