The Women's Cricket Super League, known as the Kia Super League for sponsorship reasons, was a semi-professional women's Twenty20 cricket competition in England and Wales operated by the England and Wales Cricket Board. The competition featured six franchise teams, partnered with a variety of county teams and boards and universities, and was envisaged as a means to bridge the gap between amateur domestic cricket and the increasingly professional international game. The WCSL launched in 2016, with each team playing five group stage matches in a round-robin format, followed by a finals day; this was increased to ten group matches in 2018, following the ECB abandoning their initial plans to expand the tournament by also incorporating a 50-over competition. The WCSL ended after the 2019 season, ahead of the intended launch of the ECB's new format, The Hundred, and its city-based men's and women's franchises.
History
The England and Wales Cricket Board announced their plans for the Women's Cricket Super League in June 2015, stating they would invest £3 million over four years. The competition would launch with six teams playing in a Twenty20 format, with the initial intention to add a 50-over competition in 2017. The ECB received 28 applications to host teams in the first stage of bidding, with the process subsequently moving to an interview stage. The six successful bids were announced in January 2016. The ECB hoped that the WCSL would develop as a semi-professional competition, with the intention of bridging the gap between the amateur Women's County Championship and international cricket, for which England players are centrally contracted as professionals. It was decided in advance of the 2017 season that the planned 50-over competition would not after all take place, with the ECB and the franchises preferring to concentrate their resources on developing the existing Twenty20 format. For the 2018 season, the group stage of the competition was doubled in size, with each of the teams now facing each other home and away for a total of ten group matches. In 2018, the ECB announced the planned launch of The Hundred in 2020, a new hundred-ball format competition to be played by newly-created city-based franchises with both men's and women's teams. In conjunction with this, it was also announced that the WCSL would be scrapped after the 2019 season, with the implication that the existing franchises would be wound up and there would be no more top-level women's Twenty20 competition in England.
Teams
The ECB announced the six hosts for the WCSL in January 2016, with hosting rights awarded for four years of the competition, 2016 to 2019 inclusive. The hosts and partners included seven First-class counties, five minor counties and three universities. Team names, along with the fixtures and venues for the 2016 season, were announced in February 2016. The allocation of England players to the teams was announced in April 2016, with overseas player allocations being announced later that month. led the Southern Vipers to the inaugural WCSL title in 2016
Tournament results
Format
Matches were played in a Twenty20 format. The six teams initially played each other twice each in a round robin, from which the top three finishers qualified for the finals day at a neutral venue. The second and third placed teams then met in the semi-final for the right to face the first placed team in the final. The finals day was staged at the County Cricket Ground, Chelmsford, in 2016 and the County Cricket Ground, Hove, in 2017.
Media coverage
The 2016 tournament wasn't televised, but seven group matches and the finals day were broadcast live on BBC radio's Test Match Special. In 2017, Sky Sports broadcast eight matches live – six group stage matches as part of double-headers with a men's T20 Blast match, followed by both finals day matches. They will broadcast twelve live matches from the expanded 2018 competition.
Sponsorship
The ECB announced a two-year title sponsorship agreement for the WCSL with Kia Motors in March 2016, as a result of which the competition was known as the Kia Super League.
