India are in the inaugural Women’s Champions Trophy, and the field was settled by a ranking taken on 6 July
Six teams, 16 matches and no qualifying route: the ICC’s new women’s tournament lands in Sri Lanka next February, and Ellyse Perry has had her first word on it.
Aug 18, 2026
The ICC’s newest tournament starts in six months and nobody has played a match in it. The inaugural Women’s Champions Trophy runs from 14 to 28 February 2027 in Sri Lanka, six teams, 16 matches, and India are one of the six because of where they sat in a ranking table on 6 July.
Ellyse Perry, who will be there with Australia, was asked about it this week and gave the answer of someone who has seen a lot of calendars come and go.
What Perry said
“It is another great opportunity for the women’s game and for all the teams competing,” Perry told JioStar on 17 August. “It is a new event, so it is always exciting to be a part of something like that.”
She was less relaxed about the shape of it. “This tournament will be physically and mentally a huge challenge, and preparing for those matches, everyone’s going to have to be spot on,” she said, which is a fair reading of a six-team round robin where every side plays every other one and there is nowhere to hide a bad night.
Perry also had time for two India players. Of Smriti Mandhana she talked about “amazing skill, incredible willpower and a super-strong mind”. On Harmanpreet Kaur she was more specific: “Her greatest strength is her tenacity. She is a great competitor, and when she is going, she hits some of the biggest shots in the women’s game.”
She knows the first of those two well. Perry spent several Women’s Premier League seasons at Royal Challengers Bengaluru and held the franchise’s run-scoring record until Mandhana passed it in the 2026 final, a season Perry sat out for personal reasons.
Six teams, and no way in for anyone else
The format is the part worth understanding. Sri Lanka are in as hosts. The other five places went on the ICC Women’s T20I team rankings as they stood on 6 July 2026, and they produced Australia, England, India, New Zealand and South Africa. There is no qualifier and no play-off. If you were outside that group in early July, February is not happening for you.
All six play each other once, which is 15 matches, and the top two meet in the final on 28 February. That final match makes 16.
The dates have already moved once. The tournament was originally set for June and July 2027 before the ICC shifted it back to February.
The ranking that got India in
The 6 July cut-off is worth a pause, because of what had happened in the ten days before it. India lost to Australia at Lord’s on 28 June and went out of the Women’s T20 World Cup in the group stage for the second tournament running. Australia won the thing on 5 July, beating England by seven wickets at Lord’s through Beth Mooney’s 64 and Phoebe Litchfield’s 48, a seventh title.
India’s ranking survived the exit. Two group-stage eliminations in a row have not moved them out of the top three in T20 internationals, which tells you how much of a rankings position is built on bilateral cricket and how little a three-week tournament can shift it.
Whether that is a flattering way to qualify depends on what India do with the next six months. Harmanpreet’s side have the Women’s Asia Cup in Dubai and then the Asian Games in Japan before this becomes a live concern, and they will be playing both without Jemimah Rodrigues, ruled out with a hamstring tear.
Why another tournament
The women’s international calendar has been thin on ICC global events outside the two World Cups, and a six-team February tournament gives the top sides something to play for in a month that usually holds franchise cricket and not much else. It also takes a global women’s tournament back to Sri Lanka, which last staged one in 2012, when the Women’s World Twenty20 played its group games at Galle and its semi-finals and final at the R Premadasa.
What it does not do is widen the game. The six invited sides are already the best-resourced in women’s cricket, and a country outside them cannot play its way in, whatever it does between now and February. Perry called it an opportunity for the women’s game. For the moment it is an opportunity for six teams in it.