New Delhi: Indian domestic players have benefitted immensely from the Women’s T20 Challenge and they can “walk into the South African side any day”, believes Proteas captain Sune Luus.
The 26-year-old played, who won the FairBreak Invitational tournament in Dubai and the Women’s T20 Challenge last month with the Tornadoes and Supernovas respectively, said it was “a massive opportunity and an awesome learning curve.” “The IPL was a bit of a better standard. With FairBreak there are a lot of girls from the Associates, some girls who used spikes for the first time, who played on a turf wicket for the first time so it was a whole different experience,” Luus was quoted as saying by ‘ESPNcricinfo’.
“The most surprising thing for FairBreak was the standard of cricket. You don’t really know about Austrians playing cricket or countries like that. But to see the standard they are at and the love of the game, it was exceptional to see.
“You can’t compare it to India. They are fanatics of cricket. They absolutely love it. And even the domestic players can walk into the South African side any day. The standards were a bit different but overall it was good cricket,” added Luus, who is in Ireland for a white-ball series.
The BCCI is planning to start the women’s IPL by 2023 and the inaugural edition is expected to have five or six teams.
Batting for the expansion of T20 franchise cricket, Luus said: “It’s an opportunity for some of the domestic players within countries to play with international players from around the world and obviously gain experience and learn from them.
“It’s important to have T20 leagues across the world to get to know different players and play in different conditions.” Luus also acknowledges that more franchise leagues will mean international cricket may suffer.
“It’s just a case of finding the balance with international cricket and finding the time to get enough international cricket in the calendar.
“It’s a very difficult thing because we have ICC points up for grabs, we have a Test match coming up which is quite new for a lot of the players and in-between that we have to focus on T20 cricket for the Commonwealth Games,” she said.
