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Srikandi Cup struggles in Indonesian women’s basketball landscape
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Regita Pramesti of Merpati Bali dribbles towards Stella Fabiola of Scorpio Jakarta during a Srikandi Cup match between Merpati Bali and Scorpio Jakarta on Thursday. Merpati won 47-46. (The Jakarta Post/Courtesy of www.srikandicup.com)
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uesday’s press conference on the second series of the 2020 Srikandi Cup in Kuningan, South Jakarta, sent a clear message: the league was struggling financially.
The league’s organizers were having difficulty both attracting fans and winning sponsors.
After the Women’s National Basketball League (WNBL Indonesia) was stopped in 2016, stakeholders scrambled to find a way to keep high-level women’s basketball alive. Before that, Kobanita, the previous women’s basketball league, which began in the 1990s, closed in 2009 due to a lack of funding.
“The lack of big sponsors has been the reason we could not reach our potential,” said Srikandi Cup coordinator Deddy Setiawan.
Now, despite being the country’s highest-level women’s basketball competition, the Srikandi Cup is not recognized by the Indonesian Basketball Association (Perbasi). Perbasi chairman Danny Kosasih said the Srikandi Cup was not under his organization’s flag but denied the rumor claiming he had not given his blessing to the league.
“Since the beginning, it was never conducted under Perbasi,” he said on Wednesday.
“When [the Women’s National Basketball League was halted], we gathered to discuss the effort to keep women’s basketball alive. I once supported them financially. So I will support the league until [Perbasi] can organize the women’s basketball league again.”
