The WPL and WBBL play T20 cricket in India and Australia; The Hundred uses 100 balls in England and Wales, with each competition occupying a different calendar window.
Following women’s cricket across three countries sounds straightforward until the same player appears in an Indian franchise shirt, an Australian Big Bash shirt and, a few months later, a team with a name that sounds like a particularly ambitious weather forecast.
The map is simpler than the kit collection suggests. India’s Women’s Premier League (WPL) and Australia’s Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL) play Twenty20 cricket. England and Wales’ women’s Hundred uses a different, 100-ball format. All three are domestic team competitions, not tournaments between national sides, and each offers a different way into the sport.
WPL: five teams and a concentrated season
The Women’s Premier League is India’s franchise T20 competition. Its five-team format is unusually easy to grasp: in the 2026 edition, every side faced each other twice in a double round-robin league stage, before the leading teams progressed to the playoffs. “Double round-robin” is tournament language for something refreshingly ordinary: play everyone twice, then let the table decide who gets a shot at the title.
The official WPL schedule placed that edition between 9 January and 5 February 2026, with matches in Navi Mumbai and Vadodara and the final scheduled for Vadodara. It was branded Tata WPL 2026. The sponsor’s name may change; the useful point for a new follower is that WPL means India’s women’s T20 league, not the India national team.
Five teams make for a compact field, so another meeting with the same opponent is never far away. That gives the table a clear rhythm: each fixture adds to a short league campaign, then the playoffs provide the final hurdle. The WPL is a good starting point if you want to follow a title race without needing a wall chart, a spreadsheet and a quiet word with an accountant.
WBBL: Australia’s eight-team T20 competition
The Women’s Big Bash League is Australia’s domestic women’s T20 competition. It has eight teams aligned with the men’s Big Bash clubs, giving it a broader field than the WPL. It is the Australian reference point for anyone trying to place a player’s franchise appearances alongside international cricket.
Its calendar works differently for a British reader. The WBBL belongs to the Australian cricket season, rather than the English summer. Think of it as a separate seasonal stop, not an Australian version of The Hundred taking place at the same time. Exact dates and finals arrangements should be checked against the fixtures for the edition you want to follow.
There is a useful distinction beyond team count. The WBBL and WPL both use T20 rules, so viewers can bring the same basic understanding of overs, wickets and run chases to either. But their teams, schedules and routes through a season belong to separate domestic competitions. A familiar player turning up in both does not make them one continuous league; it makes women’s cricket a decent test of how many club shirts one person’s wardrobe can accommodate.
The Hundred: the different clock
The women’s Hundred is played in England and Wales alongside a men’s competition. It has eight teams and uses 100-ball innings rather than T20’s maximum of 120 legal deliveries per innings. If you know cricket through T20, much will feel familiar: batters score runs, bowlers take wickets, and the chase still becomes unpleasantly tense when someone says, “They only need twelve”. What changes is how the innings is counted and managed.
A Hundred scorecard counts balls towards 100; a T20 scorecard works through overs towards 20. Bowlers deliver sets of five or ten balls in The Hundred, so the numbers on screen may look odd at first. The competition’s format guide explains the rules, while its official fixtures page lists match dates for each edition.
The parallel men’s and women’s competitions make The Hundred a distinctive part of the English domestic calendar. But the women’s tournament stands on its own, not merely as the match before another match. For UK-based spectators hoping to see one of these three leagues in person, it is the local option.
How the seasons fit together and how to follow them
A useful year-round mental picture runs from the WPL’s early-year window towards The Hundred in the English summer, then to the WBBL during Australia’s season. That is a guide to where to look, not a guarantee that future editions will always occupy identical dates or avoid clashes with international cricket.
It also explains why a player’s team name can change without any international transfer drama. These are separate domestic competitions, and players may appear in more than one across a year, subject to selection, contracts and availability. If an international fixture clashes with a league season, do not assume that a player you watched in one tournament will automatically appear in the next.
Where you live affects how you watch. The Hundred is played in England and Wales, the WPL in India and the WBBL in Australia; television and streaming rights are territorial and can change between editions. There is no single-channel answer for UK viewers trying to watch all three. Check each competition’s official fixtures and broadcaster information close to the season, rather than trusting a search result that still thinks last year’s final is on tomorrow.
If you are choosing one to start with, pick by what you want to learn. The WPL offers a compact five-team T20 race; the WBBL, an eight-team Australian T20 competition; The Hundred, a nearby option for British spectators and a different way to count an innings. Follow all three and the calendar starts to make sense. The kit collection remains beyond explanation.
