BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND - AUGUST 07: Jemimah Rodrigues of Team India drops a catch to dismiss Jess Jonassen of Team Australia during the Cricket T20 - Gold Medal match between Team Australia and Team India on day ten of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games at Edgbaston on August 07, 2022 on the Birmingham, England. (Photo by Alex Davidson/Getty Images)

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is set to launch the women's IPL in March 2023.

The tournament will start just after the women's T20 world cup in South Africa, ending on 26th February 2023.

The schedule is yet to be finalised, but it will finish just before the start of men's IPL at the end of March 2023.

The inaugural WIPL is likely to clash with the inaugural season of the Women's Pakistan Super League.

The planned strategy calls for 22 matches, with each squad comprising 18 players and a maximum of six foreign players.

A maximum of five overseas players can feature in the starting XI, dividing them into four full-member players and one player from associate nations.

Each team will be playing a team twice in the league phase, making it 20 matches.

However, the format for the later stage of the tournament will go with the table topper heading straight into the final. The second finalist will be decided with the table's eliminator match between the second and third-position teams.

There will be five teams participating in the tournament.

In terms of team sales, the board has shortlisted two cities for each zone -

Dharamsala/Jammu (North zone), Pune/Rajkot (West), Indore/Nagpur/Raipur (Central), Ranchi/Cuttack (East), Kochi/Vizag (South), and Guwahati (North-East).

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"With the rise in popularity of women's cricket in the country mainly due to prominent performances by the Indian Senior Cricket team on the world stage by qualifying for semi-finals in the 2018 T20 World Cup, finals in the 2020 T20 World Cup, securing a silver medal in the recently held 2022 Commonwealth games in Birmingham, we intend to conduct the Women's IPL on similar lines with the Indian Premier League," The BCCI said in its paper on WIPL.

The publication reports "an overall increase of 111% in the involvement of players across various categories" in the eight years between 2014 and 2022. This indicates a significant gain on the domestic front. According to a further breakdown, the number increased by 129% for senior ladies and 92% for those under 19.