Mumbai Indians won the Women’s Premier League title earlier in the year (Photo by Pankaj … [+]
Mighty India’s stranglehold of cricket has started to move beyond the men’s game as underlined by the lucrative deals at the Women’s Premier League auction.
A total of 165 cricketers participated in the auction at the weekend with Australian all-rounder Annabel Sutherland emerging as the financial winner after being snapped up for $240,000 by last season’s runners-up Delhi Capitals.
The 22-year-old Sutherland has had a fast start to her career and enjoyed a strong campaign in the recent Women’s Big Bash League in Australia. She hails from a prominent cricket family with her father James Sutherland the long-standing former chief executive for Cricket Australia, while brother Will is a rising star in domestic cricket.
Sutherland was the equal most-expensive player out of the 30 players bought at alongside Indian all-rounder Kashvee Gautam, who will play for the Gujarat Giants.
Annabel Sutherland starred in the WBBL (Photo by Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)
Former Australia captain Meg Lanning along with compatriots Jess Jonassen and Laura Harris were retained by Delhi prior to the auction.
The second edition of the WPL will be held in the backend of February and like the inaugural season is set to be entirely played in one city. There had been speculation that the event would be held in different cities much like the men’s Indian Premier League.
“As far as the venue is concerned, it will be held in one state only so that it is better logistically – what if we do not get two venues in one city, that is,” Indian cricket boss Jay Shah said. “Logistics are very important for us this time, next time we can figure it out.”
India, the world’s most populous country, has become the British sport of cricket’s heartland and its governing body rules with an iron fist. It is instructive that Shah holds considerable influence on the International Cricket Council board and he was also shoehorned into the working group tasked with getting cricket into the Los Angeles Olympics.
India has firmly grabbed the reins of cricket from traditional powers England and Australia, but they have been considerably slower developing women’s cricket. They made a belated push in 2018 by launching a three-team Women’s T20 Challenge staged alongside the money-spinning IPL.
A game-changing moment was the women’s T20 World Cup in 2020 when India and Australia contested the final in front of 86,000 fans at the famous Melbourne Cricket Ground – just days before Covid-19 shut down everyday life.
Katy Perry performs on stage with the Australian cricket team following their victory in the ICC … [+]
It was probably there and then when Shah and India’s decision makers realized that the women’s game was an untapped goldmine. The WPL has since been concocted and hailed as a game-changer for women’s cricket with top players earning $400,000 for a tournament, which lasted just three weeks in its first edition played in March earlier this year.
Serious investment has been put into the WPL, whose five teams fetched $572 million on the back of Viacom 18 forking out $116 million for the media rights for the next five years. The value per-game is around $1 million.
Much like the IPL, where cricket among the major nations effectively shuts down, the WPL will result in international cricket being largely on hiatus during this period as players eye major paycheques.
The WPL captured the imagination of local and international fans in the first edition with India’s hero Harmanpreet Kaur leading Mumbai, sporting their eye-catching blue kits, to the championship amid a febrile atmosphere.
The second edition is hoped to build on the foundation that has been put in place. “It will be more successful this time,” Shah said.
And the Indian cricket chief usually leaves no stone unturned to fulfil his prophecies.
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