Women’s Premier League auction today: 449 players to go under the hammer

India women's national cricket team or the Women in Blue at the DY Patil Stadium in December 2022. (Source: Twitter/@JemiRodrigues/File image)

One new league, one more auction, and the 2008 Indian Premier League (IPL) moment is all over again. But this time the players up for bidding are all female stars for the Women’s Premier League (WPL), which is all set for player auction on February 13 for its maiden season.

The WPL player auction will begin at 2:30 PM on February 13 in the Jio World Convention Centre at the Bandra-Kurla Complex in Mumbai. The event will be aired on Viacom18’s sports channel Sports18 and streamed on JioCinema. Viacom18 had won the media rights for WPL 2023 with a bid of Rs 951 crore for a five-year cycle of 2023-27.

Five franchises are in the race to choose top players for their teams for season 1. On January 25, the cricket board received a total bid of Rs 4,669.99 crore for the five franchises.

The teams include Mumbai Indians owned by Reliance Industries, Royal Challengers Bangalore owned by Diageo, Delhi Capitals owned by JSW Group-GMR Group, Gujarat Giants owned by Adani Group and UP Warriors owned by Capri Global.

Each team has assigned head coaches — Charlotte Edwards for Mumbai Indians, Jonathan Batty for Delhi Capitals, Rachel Haynes for Gujarat Giants and Jon Lewis for UP Warriors.

A total of 1,525 players had registered for the first-ever WPL player auction out of which 449 players will be up for bidding. While the initial list included 409 players, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) added 40 more players at the request of the five franchises.

Each team will have Rs 12 crore to spend on the player auction of which a minimum of Rs 9 crore has to be invested to build their squads. All five franchises have a maximum of 90 slots available, with 30 slots for overseas players. This means that each team can have up to six overseas players. So, the opening season of WPL will have a maximum of 30 foreigners and 60 Indian players.

Among the foreign players, 28 players at the WPL Auction will be from Australia and 27 from England, 23 players from the West Indies, 19 from New Zealand and 17 from South Africa. Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and Ireland will have 15, 11, 9 and 6 players, respectively at the auction round.

Marquee players available during the auction will be India skipper Harmanpreet Kaur, the star openers Smriti Mandhana and Shafali Varma, all-rounders Deepti Sharma, Ellyse Perry, Sophie Ecclestone, Deandra Dottin. A total of 24 players have chosen the top base price of Rs 50 lakh.

The next category of players in the auction will be cricketers, who went with a base price of Rs 40 lakh with a total of 30 players, including eight from the country taking part in the auction. The remaining two categories include players with a base price of Rs 20 lakh and Rs 10 lakh.