PCB eyes franchise-based T20 tournament for women

The Pakistan Cricket Board are looking to launch their own franchise-based T20 league for women. While the likes of India, England and Australia already have their own league now, the has PCB decided to take a go-slow approach in this regard to make sure they leave no stone unturned.

PCB women's wing head Rafia Haider, who visited Bangladesh recently to accompany the Pakistan Under-19 squad during their just concluded tour, in an exclusive chat with Cricbuzz insisted that they want to make sure everyone is on the same page before launching the tournament.

"It(franchise-based T20 tournament for women cricketers) is under discussion but not finalized as yet," said Rafia. "Of course it (the tournament) is going to be a huge move whenever it happens so we'll take everyone on board and do our homework properly before its fruition," she said.

Rafia added that they are taking different steps to develop women's cricket in Pakistan that includes grassroots expansion to high-performance reforms. "We are taking different initiatives to develop women's cricket in Pakistan. Recently we have dedicated the High-Performance Centre in Karachi for our Women's Cricket, where they attend their camps and train round the year. Women's U19 team was given separate team management and that HPC facility, where they prepared for the Bangladesh tour and we have seen good results right away. Separate team managements have been given to the national team and U19/emerging teams for focused player development," she said.

"Now we are eyeing to have school cricket for girls. It will help us develop a vaster pipeline for women's cricket which we feel is essential to develop the growth of women's cricket in the country," she further added.

"We have challenges and we are ready to face those challenges. For us taking women cricket to grass root level is the biggest challenge and we are making plans to overcome those challenges through school and U15 tournaments planned in future. We are trying to establish the pathway that would help us have a strong pipeline as we feel if we can nurture these Under-19 cricketers they will go a long way but our biggest challenge is to have the right pathway so that we are producing cricketers to fill the void from national level to age-level. We have regularized domestic tournaments for U19 and senior/emerging side and now focusing on u15 and u23 tournaments to keep players engaged."

Rafia said that the PCB is fully supporting them to grow women's cricket with many people starting to embrace it. "Our management (PCB) is supporting us fully and we are getting whatever is required so we can certainly say women's cricket is an integral part of PCB. The commitment and support by the Board is commendable and we have made great strides in past two years under current management," she said.

"More importantly people are embracing women's cricket like nowadays parents bring their daughters to learn cricket and it indicates we are culturally also embracing women's cricket."

Even though Pakistan did not have a successful campaign at the World Cup recently, Rafia insisted that the results didn't reflect the country's true potential. Pakistan lost four games in the tournament while three matches were abandoned. In 2025, Pakistan played 15 matches winning only six of them.

"Although we failed to earn success we came quite close against some of the big teams and couple of matches were abandoned so we cannot say we have failed in the World Cup. What we feel is that now we need to develop for high pressure/high stakes environment and be consistent because this is one area proabably we are lacking behind and we are working on to make sure we have a fitter unit in the coming days," said Rafia.

"The World Cup result does not show our true potential considering in 2025 we played 15 matches winning six matches with three being washed out," she said.

Rafia added that they will continue to support Fatima Sana, who replaced Sana Mir as captain, as she feels she got all the credentials to be a good captain. "Fatima is a good leader and we are happy with her performance as a captain. She has the right qualities to be a good captain and we will continue to support her."