There is a crowd(-worma)

The Indian Women's team wrapped up the series against England with a 10 wkt victory in Silchar...with Jhulan Goswami taking 5 wkts en-route to bundling the Englishwomen for 50 allout. The most promising thing, for me, about this match was the attendance of 20,000 spectators for the match - that's the kind of figure that sometimes even men's international matches don't muster in certain countries. One of the prime reason could be that the match was played in Silchar, a town probably starved of live cricket action in absence of men's events being scheduled there.

In this light, probably the new BCCI *thought* around organizing Ranji and other domestic matches in smaller venues makes much more sense.