The Women’s Premier League (WPL 2023) auction will be held on February 13, 2023 at the Jio World Convention Centre in Mumbai and the excitement for the same is reaching its crescendo.
A total of 409 players will go under the hammer with 246 of them being Indians and 163 overseas players, of which eight players are from the associate nations. The players in the auction register have five different slabs of base prices - INR 50 lakh, INR 40 lakh, INR 30 lakh, INR 20 lakh, and INR 10 lakh, with 24 players choosing to be slotted in the top bracket.
Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandhana, Deepti Sharma, Shafali Verma, Ellyse Perry, Sophie Ecclestone, Sophie Devine, and Deandra Dottin are among the players with the highest base price.
India men’s captain Rohit Sharma and ace spinner R Ashwin were seen in a video shared by BCCI talking about the upcoming WPL 2023 auction and said that it is something historical that is going to happen in Indian cricket.
"It is a historic thing happening in Indian cricket. More than 400 players are going under the hammer. Nervous, but exciting times. I would like to wish everyone involved the very best of luck. This has opened a lot of avenues for cricketers worldwide to showcase their talent. It is going to be massive. We have seen that with men's IPL, WPL is going to be no different," said Rohit in a video posted by BCCI.
R Ashwin, on the other hand, hoped that the tournament changes the landscape of women's cricket forever.
"About the time that women in our country got the opportunity to compete at the highest level. The women's team has done well in world championships and has been very good at world cups, and T20 WCs. Over the last few years, we have seen the Women's T20 Challenge go along really well. Now that TV rights and franchises have been sold at an unbelievable cost, I hope the landscape of women's cricket changes forever. I am looking forward to it more than ever. It is gonna be interesting at the auction," said Ashwin.
Apart from them Dinesh Karthik also shared his thoughts on the same and said that women's cricket has picked up worldwide during the last five years or so.
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"I was part of a tournament in England where I could see the interest these young girls have in watching the matches and watching their heroes play. That is what you want to see. I am looking forward to the auction. We are also gonna see some small Indian domestic players putting their names up. When they do something special and their names get called up during the auction, every girl would feel like representing the country, their franchise and get their name called out by the auctioneer during the course of an auction," said Karthik.
The five franchises will need to have at least 15 players and the minimum squad spend should be INR 9 crore. The value of the full purse is INR 12 crore and each side is allowed to buy only six foreign players.
(ANI inputs)
