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In India, a bunch of really rich businessmen recently made a really big bet, a half billion dollar bet on women's cricket.

After years of success at the international level, a new domestic league was launched in India in March. And by some measures, it's the second most valuable women's pro-sport league in the world.

And even though the league has only five teams, and the first season was just a month long, players are getting serious money.

Players will include Indian and international stars. The biggest names tend to earn up to around $400,000 for three weeks' work. That's 10 times as much as the women's 100 competition in England and Wales.

Today, Mujee Michal of the New York Times explains the rapid rise of the women's premiere league, and why it might both line the pockets of the country's elite and give young girls a new vision for their future.

From Wondery, I'm Tiffany Oshinsky. It's Friday, July 7th, and this is The Lead.

Mujee Michal, welcome to The Lead. Thanks for having me.

So Mujee, you recently wrote this wonderful feature about women's cricket in India. I think most people know that cricket is popular in India, but can you give us a sense of just how popular it is, especially on the men's side?

It's massive, and it's been popular for the longest time.

This crowd-largely India supporters have been here for a long, long time. Some of them might have been here at 12 hours.

There were phases where the cricket team would lose a match abroad, and then the players would dread returning home because their windows would smash with stones and things like that.

Just how passionate the support for the following sport was.

And more recently, in the past couple of decades, that huge presence has also meant a crazy amount of money in the game.

Just a couple of decades ago, cricket was struggling to attract audiences, and its commercial future was very much in doubt.

Now, it has the second biggest sporting franchise in the world, betted only by the NFL.

It became a franchise sport as well, so in addition to just the following that was there for the game, it's meant an incredible amount of money in the game as well.

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