Women’s cricket shake-up as franchise leagues get protected windows

The Hundred, Women’s Premier League and Women’s Big Bash have been awarded their own specific windows in the International Cricket Council’s future tours programme.

A special report by Telegraph Sport revealed the fragmented state of the men’s game, epitomised by the franchise leagues, but the latest future tours programme in the women’s game demonstrates a plan to avoid the same pitfalls.

In the period from May 2025 to April 2029, the number of teams in the tour programme has been expanded from 10 to 11 to allow Zimbabwe to join, but three windows each year have been reserved for franchise tournaments.

The Women’s Premier League (WPL) only played its first season in March 2023, but under the new ICC schedule has a protected window in January to February from 2026. The Hundred ensures no women’s international matches will be held in August, and the Women’s Big Bash has a similar window in November.

As a consequence, Australia’s home summer has been moved from its traditional position in mid-January to late in their season in February to March to avoid a clash with the most lucrative women’s franchise tournament in the world, the WPL.

The 2025 Ashes, scheduled to start on Jan 12, will be the last home internationals hosted in that month by the women’s team Down Under until at least 2029.

England Women will play more Test matches after having two home summers without a red-ball match, starting with the visit of India in the summer of 2026 which will be followed by five more Tests between 2027 and 2029, including away matches in the West Indies, India and Australia.

The West Indies have not played a Test since 2003-04 against Pakistan and have only played 12 in their history, but will be among the nations to play the red-ball format in the upcoming cycle.

From 2025 to 2029 there will be an ICC event each year, with the first women’s T20 Champions Trophy scheduled to take place in 2027, the Women’s Cricket World Cup in 2025, the T20 World Cup in England in 2026, and another T20 World Cup in 2028.

India and Pakistan will not play each other outside of major tournaments, but each team will play four teams at home and four away in a three-year cycle, and with the addition of Zimbabwe, Afghanistan are the only ICC full member nation not to have an international women’s team.

The ICC’s General Manager of Cricket, Wasim Khan said: “We are pleased that the new edition of the IWC has expanded and will include Zimbabwe as an eleventh team.

“It is heartening that Member Boards are keen to play across formats, and also that they have planned tri-series to prepare for ICC events.”

For years, men’s cricket has been spiralling out of control. There are franchise leagues in almost every cricket-playing country, as well as in some which are not traditionally associated with the game.

Everyone wants a piece of the overseas investment and sponsorship that often comes alongside a tournament, but aside from the Indian Premier League which has cultivated its own window, there is no formal structure.

There are so many leagues vying for top players that it is possible for a men’s cricketer to play a few matches in one competition, then travel to a different continent for another. Instead of players being drafted for entire tournaments, huge fees can be commanded for just a handful of matches, or in some cases just a single game.

The rise of women’s franchise cricket has been significantly more stunted. The Women’s Big Bash might have held its inaugural competition in 2015-16, but it was not until 2021 that The Hundred started, and the Women’s Premier League followed afterwards in 2023.

The global appetite for women’s cricket is far less than men’s, but the top players have become key commodities in the growth of the global game. India’s players are allowed to compete in the likes of the Hundred and the Big Bash, which their male counterparts are not allowed to, which adds to their profile and earning potential.

In the first edition of the WPL, the two top players were drafted for a fee of around £320,000, far more than the (so far) governing-body run WBBL and Hundred could offer.

Conversations that have dominated the men’s game over fixtures and the risk of player burnout, injuries and welfare have begun to make their way into the women’s. Players are taking part in more fixtures than ever before with the growth of the global game and if it was allowed to continue to grow unregulated there is a fear it could become an echo of the situation in the men’s.

By carving out clear-cut windows for the three major (and so far only) franchise tournaments, the International Cricket Council has taken a crucial stand against the ever-growing beast of franchise cricket.

However, for countries who have not yet established a women’s competition, there is no Women’s Pakistan Super League, or South Africa 20 for example, there is increasingly little room to do so and still attract the top players, which could harm the growth of the game in countries who have not yet embraced it.