Five franchises chase 27 slots as the WPL 2027 auction opens in Kochi

The five Women's Premier League franchises will fill 27 squad slots from a pool of 146 players when the WPL 2027 auction is staged in Kochi on Wednesday evening

Bidding begins at 5:30 PM IST at the Grand Hyatt Kochi, the venue the BCCI named in September when it confirmed the dates for the league's fifth season. The board's advisory, signed by honorary secretary Devajit Saikia, set the auction for 28 October and the season for 14 January to 7 February 2027.

This is a mini-auction rather than a full reset. Every franchise kept the bulk of its squad at the retention deadline of 28 September, so what is left on the table is depth rather than a first-choice eleven.

Of the 27 places available, 20 are reserved for Indian players and seven for overseas players, and the five teams carry a combined 8.15 crore rupees into the room.

UP Warriorz hold most of the money

The spending power is not evenly spread. UP Warriorz go in with 3.75 crore rupees and eight slots to fill, three of them overseas, which is more purse than the other four teams hold between them.

Gujarat Giants have 1.25 crore rupees for three places, Royal Challengers Bengaluru 1.15 crore for five, and Delhi Capitals 1.10 crore for five.

Mumbai Indians arrive with the smallest purse of all, 90 lakh rupees, and six vacancies, every one of which must go to an Indian player.

Squads are capped at 18 players and each franchise works to a salary cap of 15 crore rupees, with the money already committed to retained players deducted from what it can spend on Wednesday.

Who is in the pool

Of the 146 players shortlisted, 119 are Indian — 22 of them capped and 97 uncapped — and 27 are overseas, split between 14 capped and 13 uncapped cricketers. Six of the overseas entrants come from Associate nations.

Only two players registered at the top base price of 50 lakh rupees: England's Sophia Dunkley and Australia's Sophie Molineux. Four more sit at 40 lakh — G Kamalini, Kiran Navgire, Heather Graham and Jess Jonassen.

Thirty players are listed at 30 lakh, among them Chamari Athapaththu, Grace Harris, Chloe Tryon and Sneh Rana. The remainder of the field is bunched in the lower bands, where most of the uncapped Indian contingent sits.

Teams built around familiar names

The retention lists mean the league's best-known players are already accounted for. Smriti Mandhana and Ellyse Perry stay with Royal Challengers Bengaluru, and Harmanpreet Kaur and Nat Sciver-Brunt with Mumbai Indians.

UP Warriorz held on to Meg Lanning, Deepti Sharma and Sophie Ecclestone, while Delhi Capitals kept Jemimah Rodrigues and Shafali Verma.

Gujarat Giants retained 15 players, more than any other franchise, among them Beth Mooney and Ashleigh Gardner. That is why they have only three names to add on Wednesday.

Gujarat Giants lean on scouting

With so little to do in the room, the Giants have spent the build-up watching rather than planning for change. "We keep tabs on all our players. We watch them really carefully in domestic cricket," head coach Michael Klinger said.

Klinger said the timing of this auction, which falls close to the start of the Indian domestic season, leaves less fresh form to judge, and that the franchise has run camps of its own to fill the gap. "But we've held two camps just in the last six weeks," he said, the most recent of them in Bengaluru with the retained players and a handful of invitees.

He has also narrowed the brief to a role rather than a name. "So it's going to be areas, I think, that we can add depth - that could be fast bowling," he said.

A short wait to the season

The fifth WPL season begins on 14 January and runs to 7 February 2027, so the squads completed in Kochi will have only a few weeks together before the first ball.

Most of the league's shape was settled a month ago, when the retention lists went in. Wednesday is about the margins: a seam bowler here, an uncapped batter there, and the seven overseas places still unclaimed.

The auction is scheduled to start at 5:30 PM IST and will be shown on the Star Sports Network and streamed on JioHotstar.

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