The pace of development in women’s franchise cricket is so great that even three years ago looks like a different world.
In January 2023, five franchises for the inaugural Women’s Premier League (WPL) in India were sold for almost half a billion pounds. The significance of that moment for the women’s game cannot be understated.
For years, players had openly campaigned for a women’s version of the IPL. Given how the IPL fundamentally changed cricket forever, it tracked that the WPL would do so too. Until that point, women’s cricket had dealt in one-off moments. The 2017 World Cup final at Lord’s was watched by millions around the world and the 2020 T20 World Cup final saw a packed house at the MCG. But there were still limited examples that those moments could be translated into a gold mine for governing bodies and private investors.
The WPL did just that. IPL owners saw the prospect of a women’s team as a worthy investment, and stumped up the cash. The inaugural auction saw Smriti Mandhana snapped up for more than £300,000 – the kind of money previously barely acknowledged as a possibility for a female player to earn from a single league. Over the following years, teams built dedicated fanbases, both tapping into existing IPL tribalism and establishing their own unique identities. Social media followings for the highest performing players boomed, and moments like Issy Wong’s hat-trick cut through into the mainstream.
However, in the last year, that growth has stunted, and the WPL’s position at the top of the women’s franchise infrastructure now looks vulnerable.
Wednesday’s auction was a sign of that. Last year’s mega-auction triggered the first squad reset in the league’s history. That meant in this year’s mini-auction, only 27 spots were up for grabs – seven of those being for overseas players. The maximum base price players could enter the auction at (INR 50 lakh – roughly £40,000), combined with the scarce slots available meant few high profile, non-retained overseas players put their names in. Only Sophia Dunkley and Sophie Molineux set their reserve prices at the highest level. Absent from the auction list were the likes of Alana King, Alice Capsey, and Danni Wyatt-Hodge.
The salaries for the highest-paid players in the WPL – the likes of Nat Sciver-Brunt, Ash Gardner, along with marquee India players – are still the highest in the world. But salaries for the players who sit in the ranks just below them aren’t high enough to entice a large chunk of overseas players to prioritise it.
In the current international calendar, franchise leagues have correctly hedged their bets that the money on offer will, for the most part, mean players will choose those leagues over international duties. This year however, with England’s T20I series in Sri Lanka set to clash with the end of the tournament, and most players able to earn higher or equivalent salaries in the Hundred and WBBL, most have chosen their country instead.
At the crux of this is the small size of the WPL compared to The Hundred and the WBBL. Without expansion beyond its original five teams, its player-base will always be limited. While that allows for the absolute elite to take centre stage, it doesn’t allow for enough new players to generate interest, and exacerbates the skill and experience gap between the cream of the international crop and up-and-coming Indian domestic players.
Equally, as long as the competition is limited to being played between two venues, the potential to grow the league’s fanbase in India will be limited. ‘Home’ fans will be excluded for a majority of the teams and, more importantly, the league will continue to present an image of a developing competition rather than a fully-fledged one.
The comparison to The Hundred and the WBBL is also important. Private investment in The Hundred this year saw salaries boom for both the highest-paid players and the middle tier. The sale of the WBBL could see the same, and scrapping the overseas draft has already seen salaries grow. WPL salaries, however, have not significantly grown since RCB broke the bank for Smriti Mandhana in 2023. By comparison, Mandhana’s Hundred salary has almost tripled in that time, and the highest earning player’s paycheque has increased almost seven-fold.
Scotland’s Kathryn Bryce is also an interesting case-study. The WPL’s Associate rule allows teams to field an extra overseas player in their XI (although crucially not in their squad) if they come from an Associate country.
The boundaries of Associate and Full Member teams are blurred in women’s cricket – Scotland comfortably beat Ireland in the T20 World Cup this year and ran Sri Lanka close. Bryce is ranked among the top 10 T20I allrounders in the world, but set her base price for the 2027 auction at the lowest point. Given what the premium allrounders often sell for in auctions, Bryce could have demanded a spot without the Associate rule. But, because of the limited spots on offer, Bryce instead entered the auction at the lowest salary base, and ended up as an absolute bargain – UP Warriorz were able to pick her up at roughly £8,000. In contrast, at The Hundred this year, Manchester Supergiants bought her for more than eight times as much, at £65,000.
Money and salaries aren’t a complete indicator of a league’s success, but for the WPL they matter more. Its original impact was built on being able to commercialise the women’s game, but now it doesn’t hold that monopoly. As the WBBL and the Hundred have accelerated, the WPL has stagnated. In order to counter that flatline, the league has to expand, or risk losing its place at the top of the women’s franchise hierarchy.
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