2018 Review: 5 firsts for Indian women's cricket

#3 Extension of domestic structure for women

The highlight of the BCCI's declaration of the 2018-19 domestic calendar was, 'the scrapping of three-day Inter-Zonal event'. Instead, BCCI accommodated several other tournaments for the first time to the women's domestic portfolio.

Removal of the three-day tournament from the calendar wasn't a bad idea though. As the popularity of one-day and T20 cricket at the world stage is phenomenal and its yielding better results for the boards. So, it is a better idea to stick with it.

Moreover, there is hardly any country organising Test cricket for them. As far as my memory goes, the only Test played this year was during the Australian summer between Australia and England.

Coming back to the BCCI, it carried out its homework really well and proposed some new tournaments to strengthen the grassroots. They proposed, a T20 and ODI league along with a Challenger Trophy for the U19 & U23 women. Earlier, only ODI league at the Zonal level was used to feature in domestic calendar.

In addition, a T20 Challenger Trophy for the senior women was the first event, earlier this year BCCI introduced for the first time, ahead of the World T20. The event got a good response.

Where U16 women cricket is yet to find its place in the domestic calendar, BCCI have a huge task ahead of the next year's calendar declaration.