ACS Women's International Cricket Year Book 2026

8 In 2025 the ECB restructured the competitions other than The Hundred into three tiers (with initially no promotion or relegation) involving named county sides with eight teams selected for Tier One (one county from each of the franchises), the remaining first-class counties in Tier Two and the National Counties in Tier Three. A new T20 knockout cup was added in which sides from all three Tiers played, with the Tier One sides given byes into the Third Round. In 2026 Yorkshire have been added to the Tier One teams. The ECB has been consulted and it has been agreed that only matches in Tiers One and Two, and all the matches in the knockout (following the precedent of minor counties appearing in the early years of the men’s Gillette Cup) should rank as List A/Twenty20, but the Tier Three matches should not rank. There are many scorecards missing from the early Area Championships, and there are also many matches for which only summary scores are known. INDIA The Women’s Cricket Association of India (WCAI) was formed by Mahendra Sharma in Lucknow in 1973 and the first Senior National Women’s Cricket Championship for states took place in April 1973. This tournament continued mostly annually but at different times of the year. The first ranked game in this tournament is the 1974/75 final which was a three-day game, previous matches having been one- day declaration or 25 over games. There was a short-lived rival organization, the Board of Control for Women’s Cricket in India, which ran a couple of tournaments in the early 1970s but WCAI were the body recognised by IWCC and so BCWCI matches are not ranked. In 1976/77 the WCAI competition was played in a format that was to remain standard in almost every season until the BCCI took over. Two state teams qualified from each zone, early rounds were one-day limited overs (variously 45, 50 or 60), the semi-finals were two-day games but 90 overs per side single innings, and the final was a three-day game two innings per side. To avoid the anomaly of the semi- finals having no ranking these games have been included as first-class. In 1978/79 however it was 60 overs one-day throughout. In addition to the state teams Universities, Railways and Air India also competed, and as the latter two teams were able to employ their players, they were the most successful. The qualifying state places were not always taken up, and details of the qualifying tournaments in each zone are sparse except for the South Zone. It has therefore been decided at this stage not to rank the qualifying tournaments. The main tournament being arranged at different times of the year also makes it difficult to decide when to search in newspapers for the qualifying matches which may not have had any coverage anyway. The Rani Jhansi Trophy for zones was instituted in 1974/75, and was played in most subsequent years. In some seasons Air India and Railways also competed, sometimes as a combined Institutional Zone. All matches are ranked as List A. In 1987/88 there was a second inter-zonal 50 over competition, in 1993/94 two extra distinct inter- state tournaments (but no inter-zonal that season), and in 2000/01 a second inter-state tournament. It does appear that these were WCAI events and so are ranked List A. All four additional tournaments were named for Indira Priyadarshini but it is not known why they were played in those seasons alone, or if there were other tournaments with this name. A number of other tournaments have been found in which state teams competed, sometimes alongside club sides, for example in Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Lucknow, but as these appear not to be WCAI events they are not ranked. The BCCI took over fromWCAI in 2006 in time for the 2006/07 season from which point annual state and zonal tournaments have taken place for every affiliated state. There was a separate BCCI Associate Members tournament in 2011/12 which is not ranked, and those teams are ranked from