MUMBAI: A couple of months after winning their maiden ODI World Cup title at the venue by beating South Africa in the final by 52 runs on Nov 3, India’s top women cricketers are likely to return to the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai for the fourth season of the Women’s Premier League.TOI has learnt that the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai and the Kotambi Stadium in Vadodara are likely to stage the fourth season of the WPL. “A formal decision regarding this will be taken at the WPL Governing Council meeting on Nov 26 in Delhi (a day before the WPL mega auction in the Capital on Nov 27), but it has been communicated to the franchises to make their hotel bookings in both cities,” a source tracking developments told this paper.Like the previous seasons, the tournament is expected to be played in a caravan model, with the competition likely to begin in Navi Mumbai before moving to the second venue.“The tournament is likely to start at the DY Patil Stadium. A large chunk of the matches will be held there, before the last leg moves to Vadodara. Vadodara can’t stage the first leg because the Kotambi Stadium is hosting the India versus New Zealand ODI on Jan 11, and the Indian team will be in Vadodara from Jan 6-12,” the source said. It means that the opening match of WPL-4 could be held in Navi Mumbai, with the final being staged in Vadodara.The tournament is scheduled to be held from Jan 7 to Feb 3. It has been reported earlier that the BCCI advanced the WPL-4 dates to Jan 2026 because of the 2026 men’s T20 World Cup, which will start in the first week of February and will be held in India and Sri Lanka for a month.After the Indian women’s team won their maiden World Cup crown on Nov 3, skipper Harmanpreet Kaur said that her team believes the DY Patil Stadium, which started regularly hosting the Indian women’s white-ball matches since 2022, is a lucky venue and a “home” for the Women in Blue.Harmanpreet revealed that her side felt relieved when it learnt that the venue of the Women’s ODI World Cup had changed from Bengaluru to Navi Mumbai in August.“As soon as we got to know that our venue had been changed to DY Patil Stadium, we all got so happy because we’ve always played good cricket there. The biggest thing is the crowd, it’s always so supportive. So, when the venue changed from Bangalore, we all started messaging in the group. We were manifesting. We said, ‘The final is going to be there, we won’t leave it now.’ As soon as we reached Mumbai, we said, ‘We’ve come home now, and we’ll start fresh.‘ We didn’t want to look back at previous World Cups, we left them there. The new World Cup had just started.”
