India's great fast bowler Jhulan Goswami feels that the growth of franchise cricket in the women's circuit is beneficial for the budding female cricketers and advised the International Cricket Council (ICC) to ensure that there aren't any clashes between international and franchise tournaments.
"It's a big challenge for women's cricket," Goswami said on ESPNcricinfo's Powerplay podcast.
"Earlier we saw these things happen for men's cricket but never expected it to happen for women's cricket, but that's happening. And I'm happy to see that. The ICC needs to take care, franchise cricket is the future of women's cricket. And that's the growth of women's cricket globally. You have to give priority to every franchise league otherwise cricket will not grow."
The Women's Premier League (WPL) franchise Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) suffered due to a similar franchise vs country clash when they failed to procure the services of Heather Knight for the second season, earlier this year.
Heather Knight, who is the captain of the England team chose to represent the country during her team's tour of New Zealand and therefore pulled out of the second season of the Women's Premier League.
Recently, Chamari Athapaththu, Jemimah Rodrigues, Richa Ghosh and Deepti Sharma also missed the first week of the women's Hundred as they were representing their respective countries in the ACC Women's Asia Cup.
"See how many quality cricketers were produced by franchise cricket in the last few years, starting with WBBL as well as the Hundred, WCPL, WPL," Goswami mentioned.
"A lot of youngsters they've provided every year so you have to give priority to those windows and after that you have to have bilateral series. If you have your bilateral series and franchise leagues clashing then you will lose out on quality cricketers. And if you don't have quality cricketers then your tournament is not going to be successful.
Goswami also emphasized that international cricket should seek benefit from the proliferation in the T20 leagues around the world rather than stunting its development.
"In women's cricket we don't have a lot of options, a few quality cricketers we have in the world. If they're occupied in bilateral series, then the volume of the (T20) tournaments is going to go down. We should make sure that when the premier league (franchise) tournaments are going on, give them certain windows and after that you have the bilateral series. It will help women's cricket's growth also. That is my personal view."
