The general secretary of the Board of Cricket Control of India (BCCI) Ratnakar Shetty has admitted that the cricketing body is planning to have Future Tour Programs (FTP) for the Women’s team at par with the men’s team as far as T20 and One-Days are concerned.
This call for overseas schedule and a franchise based tournament for the women cricketers have gained a lot of momentum after India’s heroics in the Women’s World Cup earlier this year. Despite losing the final against the host England by 9 runs, the women’s team has earned a lot of praise with their fearless cricket.
While talking at the Sports Journalist Federation of India conclave the general secretary of BCCI said, “We are now planning to have an 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.”
BCCI has also finalized various zonal tournaments for the U-16, U-19, and U-23 levels other than increasing the number of international matches for the senior team. “We have restructured the women”s cricket at the junior level and we will have a U-16 tournament at the zonal level because I can tell you from my experience that it is not easy to get 15 players in every state association. So this year we will have the 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,” he further admitted.
Shetty also admitted that the main focus will be on shorter format of the game as countries like England and Australia are not too interested to play test cricket. India last played a test match in 2014 against South Africa.
