The inter-zonal tournament of five three-day matches will be held in Pune between March 28 and April 11
ESPNcricinfo Staff
Red-ball cricket for women will return to India’s domestic calendar after six years when the BCCI hosts the Senior Women’s Inter-Zonal Multi-Day Trophy in Pune from March 28. It was in 2018 that a domestic red ball tournament – its two-day matches – was last held in India for women.
This comes not long after India played – and won – repeat Tests against England and Australia in December 2023. India had also played Tests on their tours of England and Australia in 2021, but you have to pay them all back in road to 2014 for the previous instance of India playing a women’s test and a women’s test held in India when South Africa had toured.
The matches will be hosted by the Maharashtra Cricket Association, with East Zone vs North East Zone and West Zone vs Central Zone games kicking off the action. The North Zone and South Zone qualified immediately for the semi-finals and will meet the winners of the first two games from 3 April. The final will be held from April 9. All matches will be three days.
The tournament will begin just ten days after the final of the ongoing second edition of the WPL, scheduled for March 17 in Delhi.
There has been clamor in recent times for more women’s Tests to be held, with only the occasional Test match – against Australia, England, India and South Africa – currently being played. For India, this means they are playing a form of the game in which they have little experience.
Before the Test against England last December, Smriti Mandana, speaking at a press conference, had said:[Our] Bodies are not used to playing four days of cricket in a row because we generally play T20s and ODIs which have gaps. More than a physical place, being there [on the field] for four days mentally, trying to focus on each ball [is important].”
At the time, she had expressed hope that the BCCI would consider restarting the women’s domestic red-ball competition, saying: “As the number of Tests increases, we may see a new domestic tournament for long-run cricket. The domestic structure is always in accordance with international requirements”.
More recently, Meg Lanning has taken a somewhat stronger position on the matter. “It’s really hard to prepare for a Test match. In my career, we’ve played once every two years. It takes us two days to learn how to play it again, and then the Test is over,” he had said. “If you really want the games to be a good competition and more nations to play and the players to understand the game a bit more, I think we should probably play more. Or go the other way and not play any at all and focus on the short formats ».