The first ever WNBA match was played in 1997, 51 years after the NBA had changed basketball forever. In club football, it took women 46 years after their male counterparts to play on the grandest stage, as the women’s equivalent of the UEFA European Cup/Champions League debuted in 2001. Now, another revolutionary sporting competition has eventually brought women to the fore. Fifteen years after the Indian Premier League (IPL) kick-started a new era for the men’s game, the Womens’ Premier League (WPL) has launched to do the same for female cricketers, in a country where cricket remains a religion, inundated with gods, but crying out for goddesses.
“A tournament of this scale is going to elevate the status of women’s cricket across the globe. We used to look outwards when our women were getting ready for tournaments such as the WBBL (in Australia) or The Hundred (in England). But with the WPL, the world is going to start gravitating towards India because of the sheer scale and grandeur. The face of women’s cricket is going to change,” believes Aakash Chopra, former Indian batter, commentator and presently a WPL expert with Sports 18 and JioCinema.
An extravaganza that finally looks and feels like the real deal
Harmanpreet Kaur got the WPL off to an explosive start with a superb 65 Courtesy BCCI
Chopra’s words were vindicated on the opening night of the WPL on March 4, as Mumbai’s DY Patil Stadium was drowned in a sea of blue, with the Mumbai Indians leaving the Gujarat Giants unmoored. In a throwback to what Brendon McCullum had done for the IPL in 2008 in Bengaluru, Harmanpreet Kaur brought a new tournament to life in Mumbai with a swashbuckling knock. Her 30-ball 65 set the tone for the match, the WPL and for the next chapter in women’s cricket.
“The WPL is one league that everyone was waiting for. Now that it’s underway, it’ll end up being a huge milestone. We saw the dynamics of the men’s game change after the men’s league started in 2008 and I think we’ll see something similar with women’s cricket,” says Veda Krishnamurthy, an Indian batter who is also on Sports 18 and JioCinema experts’ panel for the WPL.
With five franchises taking part in its inaugural season, the WPL has already shown a positive trajectory vis-a-vis the early years of the IPL. At the WPL auction last month, franchises were bought for an average price of Rs 934 crore, as compared with the figure of Rs 741 crore, which was the mean value of an IPL franchise back in 2008. So far, the WPL matches have witnessed packed stadiums (helped by the provision of free tickets for women), sleek presentation and quality cricket, all of which are several notches higher than what the Women’s T20 Challenge had to offer, the not-so glamorous predecessor of the WPL that ran between 2018 and 2022. Most importantly, there is a sense among cricket enthusiasts that the WPL is a gamechanger. Everyone from the players to the coaches to the fans know that something special is brewing, not least because the best in women’s cricket have assembled for an extravaganza that finally looks and feels like the real deal.
Reviving the finer and subtler nuances of cricket through the WPL
Sneh Rana (right) with Alyssa Healy, ahead of the match between the Gujarat Giants and the UP Warriorz on March 5 Courtesy BCCI
“In men’s cricket we’re clutching at straws for all-rounders, whereas the women’s game is all about players with multi-faceted qualities. While men’s cricket is becoming power-oriented and faster, a lot of the finer and subtler nuances of the game are getting lost. Nuances which are likely to be present in the WPL,” describes Chopra, who picks Delhi Capitals as the most balanced side and “slight favourites”. For Krishnamurthy, however, the team to beat are the Royal Challengers Bangalore, led by Smriti Mandhana, the most expensive player in women’s franchise cricket history.
While Indian stars like Mandhana, Kaur and Shafali Verma and overseas stalwarts such as Meg Lanning, Ellyse Perry and Natalie Sciver-Brunt are expected to light up the WPL at different stages, the inaugural edition is much more than an exhibition of celebrated champions. Just like the IPL, the WPL is about unearthing gems and making overnight sensations of unheralded talent.
Among them are Shabnam Shakil, a 15-year-old medium pacer snapped up by Gujarat, who is getting to rub shoulders with Mithali Raj and Rachael Haynes, and Asha Shobana, a 30-year-old leg-spinner who was recruited by Bangalore through their AI scouting system even before their WPL franchise had come into being. For someone like Sneh Rana, the WPL is a shot at redemption. Having come close to quitting cricket a few years ago, the 29-year-old off-spinner is the vice-captain of the Giants this season.
Given that the lowest WPL contract is pegged at Rs 10 lakh for a single campaign, the majority of Indian players, used to earning a maximum of Rs 3 lakh for an entire domestic season, should attain greater financial security through the competition that lasts 22 days.
‘The WPL needs to be looked at as a league of its own’
Aakash Chopra and Veda Krishnamurthy have picked DC and RCB as their respective favourites for this season’s WPL
Even though comparisons with the IPL are inevitable, the WPL must do enough to create its separate identity, feels Krishnamurthy. “The WPL needs to be looked at as a league of its own. If people can approach it with an open mindset, it’s going to be great for the sport. A large part of this comes down to the broadcaster, and I’m happy to see that Viacom 18 is doing a great job so far,” says Krishnamurthy.
At the same time, the WPL has three franchises that are the corresponding units of three of the most popular entities in the IPL. How does that impact their performance and branding? “If you already have a franchise [in the IPL], you have a business model that you understand and you can hope to run the team better. In terms of brand recall, it helps, but it also builds pressure, since you’re expected to deliver to a certain standard. On the other hand, the new franchises have enlisted the services of personnel who’ve been there and done that elsewhere. They have a clean slate to begin with, and as we saw with the Gujarat Titans last year, that can sometimes be a wonderful thing,” says Chopra.
Whether MI, DC or RCB add to their rich franchise history through the WPL or any of the new franchises writes their own remarkable story from scratch, the WPL has carved its place in the annals of Indian cricket. With a professional setup and the promise of an ever-increasing fan base, the WPL’s growth curve has at last been set in motion. After years of if and when, the time for the WPL has come. Its time is now.
The Women's Premier League can be watched live on JioCinema, Sports18-1, Sports18 Khel, Colors Kannada Cinema and Colors Tamil