WPL player auction - who could be the big buys, and all other questions answered
What do the auction pools look like, what is the sort of money being spent, and much more
Smriti Mandhana and Shafali Verma are among ten Indians in the highest base-price bracket • PA Images via Getty Images
Yes. The appetiser the main event needed, right? Last month, we had bids to identify the owners of the five teams. Now, we will know the squads.
The auction will be held on Monday, February 13, from 2.30pm IST. It will be held at the Jio World Convention Centre at the Bandra-Kurla Complex in Mumbai. The tournament, comprising 22 matches, will be played between March 4 and March 26 across the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai and Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai.
A maximum of 90 slots - the squads can have between 15 and 18 players - are up for grabs. Each team can have up to six overseas players, so there could be up to 30 non-Indian players who get teams. Nineteen players from Associate teams have also been shortlisted.
It is not mandatory for teams to pick an Associate player but there's an incentive for picking one. Teams can field four overseas players in their XIs, as is the case in the IPL, but they have the option of including a fifth overseas player provided she is from an Associate nation.
For the inaugural season, the auction purse with each franchise is INR 12 crore (US$ 1.46 million approx.). International players had the option of choosing their base prices at INR 30 lakh (US$ 36,000 approx.) or INR 40 lakh (US$ 48,000 approx.) or INR 50 lakh (US$ 60,000 approx.), while uncapped players had their base prices at INR 10 lakh (US$ 12,000 approx.) and INR 20 lakh (US$ 24,000 approx.).
Of those, 269 are from India, and 179 are overseas players, including 19 from Associate teams. There are a total of 202 capped players, and 227 uncapped players, with the 19 Associate players not part of those lists.
A total of 24 players, including ten Indians, have the highest base price.
The first set includes Devine, Ecclestone, Gardner, Harmanpreet, Mandhana, Hayley Matthews and Perry, with only Matthews at a base price of INR 40 lakh. That could see fierce bidding as teams would want to snap up the multi-faceted players, who could offer them a leadership option, too. Lanning, Healy, Deepti and Kapp, among others, will come up in later sets, which could see teams perhaps go slow at the start.
Jafta and Phiri are in the top bracket, while more established names from South Africa, like Marizanne Kapp, Shabnim Ismail and Mignon du Preez have their base price at INR 40 lakh, and those from Zimbabwe, like captain Mary-Anne Musonda or allrounder Precious Marange, have their price set at INR 30 lakh.
All of them, including the reserves.
Latika Kumari, aged 41, is the oldest player in the auction with Zimbabwe's Marange close on the heels at 40. Kumari played six T20Is for India between 2009 and 2014, including the T20 World Cups in those two years. She last played for India in 2015 and represented Delhi in the domestic circuit.
Disha Kasat, who captained Vidarbha to the semi-finals of the Senior Women's T20 Trophy earlier this season and also topped the run-chart, is listed at INR 10 lakh, while Rajasthan's Jasia Akhter, who had the highest strike rate (138.57) among the top ten run-scorers in the competition, is at INR 20 lakh. Sarla Devi is the only one in the auction pool from Jammu and Kashmir, while the more experienced, hard-hitting allrounder Rubia Syed doesn't figure.
S Sudarshanan is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo