Top Cricketers Fetch $400,000 Deals For India’s New Three-Week Women’s Premier League

In a momentous, game-changing moment for cricket, several leading players earned blockbuster deals in India’s inaugural Women’s Premier League auction on Monday.

Aggressive Indian batter Smriti Mandhana received the biggest haul when she was sold to the Royal Challengers Bangalore for $410,000. The five-team, 22-game WPL will be held in Mumbai and Navi Mumbai from March 4-26.

The 26-year-old Mandhana was in hot demand, including by Nita Ambani, who is the wife of Mumbai Indians owner Mukesh Ambani, the 10th richest person in the world according to Forbes’ real-time billionaires list.

“We have been watching the auction of men’s. It is such a big moment for women to have an auction of this sort. The whole thing is exciting,” Mandhana said.

There were other huge deals, including Australian stars Nat Sciver-Brunt and Ashleigh Gardner ($387,000 each). India’s captain Harmanpreet Kaur was sold to the Mumbai Indians for $218,000.

“I think it is a game changer for all of us. We are going to experience this pressure for the first time. I’m very excited,” Harmanpreet said. “This will entirely change women’s cricket not only in India but in world cricket. It’s a great initiative, we all are looking forward to that.”

The giddy numbers are set to upend women’s cricket, which had been slow to develop in India compared to trendsetters Australia and England. But sensing a rise in women’s cricket, India’s wealthy governing body, always keen on the next money-spinner, launched a three-team Women’s T20 Challenge in 2018 staged alongside the lucrative men’s Indian Premier League.

It was something of a trial run but in the years since, marked by a highly successful 2020 women’s T20 World Cup capped by a 85,000 final at the MCG between Australia and India, women’s cricket has only grown and become more popular.

Still it needed India’s significant heft to take it to another level, something like what the IPL did to T20 cricket when it launched in 2008 and the sport has never been the same since.

With India on board, that might be enough to guarantee the success of the WPL. The financial investment has already been mammoth after the sale of the five teams fetched $572 million on the back of Viacom 18 forking out 9.51 billion Indian rupees ($116 million) for the media rights for the next five years. The value per-game is around $1 million.

It might take a while for the WPL to totally gain steam but one suspects India’s mighty governing body will do everything in its power to make it profitable. Above all, there is now a lucrative league, which will surely expand in the future, for young girls to aspire for and the flow on effects are immense.

While cricket has long struggled for growth beyond its traditional base, the women’s game does present opportunities in unlikely areas. The biggest success story is Thailand, whose women’s team has become a top-10 side and a template for others to replicate.

While in some countries there might already be a congestion for sports among men, women may not have the same opportunities in what could create opportunities for cricket like unexpectedly in Thailand.

As always in cricket, the political tension between India and Pakistan is the elephant in the room. Pakistan players were not part of the 409-player auction in a freeze out akin to the IPL, which has been without Pakistan players apart from its first edition.

Perhaps sensing this, Pakistan will start their own women’s T20 league but it obviously won’t have anything near the financial clout as the WPL.

It’s clearly not an ideal situation but the stance is unlikely to change any time soon much like how the foes don’t meet in men’s bilateral cricket.

For the rest of the world, however, the WPL will represent something of the pinnacle of women’s cricket alongside World Cups. Similarly to the men’s game, there could be uncertainty over the efforts to expand women’s international cricket which has often been limited to only a handful of teams being competitive.

Undoubtedly the landscape has been altered forever and one suspects the dawn of the WPL will be seen as a harbinger moment for women’s cricket.