India to 'prepare' for Women’s T20 World Cup 2024 with no matches for seven months

There are two T20 World Cup tournaments in 2024. The men’s T20 World Cup will be played in June in the West Indies and USA, while the women’s T20 World Cup will take place in Bangladesh in September and October. In the last Women’s T20 World Cup which took place in 2023 in South Africa, India suffered a heart-breaking five-wicket defeat to Australia in the semi-finals as their spirited campaign came crashing down. India will soon have a chance at redemption and win their first World Cup trophy. But will that be possible? A look at India’s upcoming schedule makes for a baffling look. India women as of now are not scheduled to play a single international game from now till the start of the T20 World Cup 2024. Not a single game. Indian men’s team is not devoid of cricket but have no T20I matches after the upcoming series against Afghanistan. It is their only international assignment in the shortest format ahead of the T20 World Cup, but then they have the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 which will go on until May. The players have the privilege to play in the world’s best T20 league before the World Cup starts in June. For the women cricketers, the scenario is a lot different. The Women’s Premier League (WPL) 2024 is expected to end by mid-March which will leave a minimum of a six-month gap. BCCI will likely arrange competitive matches ahead of the T20 World Cup and those series probably have not been worked out yet. But it’s this apathy which is the real problem here. Not for the first time, the women’s cricket team has been meted out the stepchild treatment and hung out to dry. For the men’s team, there will be matches against Sri Lanka in July, Bangladesh in September, New Zealand in October and in all probability the five-match Test series against Australia will begin in November. Hardly any information like that is available in the public domain for women’s cricket. The only information is the possibility of a series against Australia and West Indies in December 2024, but nothing before the T20 World Cup. Why can the richest cricket board not plan out a few series in advance? What sort of resource crunch is grappling the board? Maybe it’s less about resource crunch and more about lack of intent. There’s no other way to put it and this even renders some historic steps like the "pay equity policy" as mere lip service. The preparation for the T20 World Cup has begun (or ended?) with a 2-1 series defeat to Australia at home in which the Women in Blue were found wanting with the bat and in the field. In the World Cup, there’s a high chance of batting once again proving to be the team’s bane. The team, starting from Harmanpreet Kaur, must take the blame for not being consistent in the batting department besides fielding, but it has to be added here that the scheduling is also going against the players. Preparing and practicing at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) is not the same as actual match time and if BCCI wants the women’s team to be best prepared, then it’s high time the board starts giving them a consistent run of international games, and not just a few in isolated clusters.