Women's Premier League (WPL) is a cricket franchise tournament for the women players organised by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). WPL will be a T20 competition and its core ideology is to empower women's cricket in India particularly.
After 15 years of conducting the men's IPL, a bonanza for the development of Indian cricket, the BCCI intends a similar path for the female players. The general body of the BCCI approved the proposal of the WPL in October 2022.
The inaugural season of the league will see the participation of five teams. Three of the five teams are owned by the owners of Men's IPL franchises.
Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB), Mumbai Indians (MI) and Delhi Capitals (DC) have extended their foot in the WPL.Lucknow Warriors and Gujarat Giants are the two other teams owned by Capri Global and Adani Sportsline respectively.
A total of 1525 players had initially registered for the WPL auction. The list was trimmed to 409 players - 246 Indians and 163 overseas players. Eight of the 163 overseas players are from associate nations.
A maximum of 90 slots can be secured by the five teams and no team can have more than six overseas players (one from associate nation). It means a maximum of 30 foreigners and 60 Indians will be sold under the hammer.
A total of 24 players have set their base price as INR 50 lakhs, which is the highest base price a player can set in the WPL auction. The likes of Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandhana, Jemimah Rodrigues, Shafali Verma, Deepti Sharma, Meg Lanning, Ellyse Perry and Alyssa Healy fall under this category.
30 players have opted to register their names under the base price category of INR 40 lakhs. Radha Yadav, Harleen Deol, Shikha Pandey, Beth Mooney, Marizanne Kapp, Hayley Matthews, Tahila McGrath, Amelia Kerr and Heather Knight are under this pool of auction.
Each franchise will be allocated a purse of INR 12 crore ($ .46 million approximately). Each team should make purchase of at least 15 players from the auction and the maximum strength of the squad can be up to 18 players.
The WPL Auction will take place on February 13 at the Jio World Convention Centre in Mumbai. The WPL auction will start at 2:30 PM in the afternoon.
The WPL Auction will be telecasted on Sports18 on TV and one can tune in to Jio Cinema for online/live streaming.
