Women's IPL: Five franchises to feature in inaugural edition to be unveiled on January 25

Mumbai: BCCI is likely to reveal the names of five franchises which will feature in the inaugural edition of Women's Indian Premier League (IPL) and the cities they will operate from on January 25, reported ESPNCricinfo on Thursday. The financial bids of these franchises, currently sealed in envelopes will be opened on that day. BCCI has however pointed out in its tender document that it is not "obliged to accept the highest monetary offer" and would look for way for bidders to work towards the betterment of women's cricket in the country.

Women's IPL to start from March 3

Last week, BCCI had released a tender inviting bids to own, operate the five WIPL franchises, which will finally start from March 3 to March 26. In the Invitation to Tender (ITT) document, BCCI has pointed out that a single bidder can contest for more than one city. BCCI has shortlisted a total of 10 cities and their venues in the tender. The list includes names like, Ahmedabad (Narendra Modi stadium, capacity 112,560), Kolkata (Eden Gardens, 65,000), Chennai (MA Chidambaram stadium, 50,000), Bangalore (M Chinnaswamy stadium, 42,000), Delhi (Arun Jaitley stadium, 55,000), Dharamsala (HPCA stadium, 20,900), Guwahati (Barsapara Stadium, 38,650), Indore (Holkar stadium, 26,900), Lucknow (AB Vajpayee Ekana cricket stadium, 48,800) and Mumbai (Wankhede / DY Patil / Brabourne Stadiums).

Zonal event

Though three venues are listed for Mumbai, BCCI has said that one of the three grounds will be used on basis of "availability and other factors". The current plan of having a 10-city pool is different from what BCCI had submitted to state associations of the sport at its Annual General Meeting (AGM) last year. Back then, BCCI intended to either pick one city from each of the six zones across India or hold the tournament in half-a-dozen cities without proper home basis for five teams.