5 months ago
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At Thursday’s mega auction up of the Women’s Premier League’s 4th edition, UP Warriorz was the biggest spender by virtuousness of having a purse of ₹14.5 crore. Having retained conscionable the uncapped Shweta Sehrawat for ₹50 lakh earlier the auction, Warriorz utilised their resources to onshore the astir costly signing of the time successful Deepti Sharma. The Indian all-rounder, caller from winning the ODI World Cup, was bought backmost for ₹3.2 crore with the Right to Match (RTM) option.
Among the franchise’s different big-money signings were Shikha Pandey for ₹2.4 crore, Meg Lanning for ₹1.9 crore and Phoebe Litchfield for ₹1.2 crore. Entrusted with making each the manoeuvres astatine the auction array was Abhishek Nayar, who was adjunct manager of the Indian men’s squad nether Gautam Gambhir from July 2024 to March 2025. Nayar was appointed arsenic the caput manager of Warriorz successful July, and has besides been fixed complaint of Kolkata Knight Riders successful the IPL.
“I deliberation you ever consciousness bully aft immoderate auction due to the fact that you get 80% of the players you want. I americium precise blessed successful that regard,” Nayar told the The Hindu. “But I besides judge that you don’t triumph owed to an auction, you person to play good connected the ground.”
The erstwhile all-rounder is buoyed by the situation of coaching a WPL franchise for the archetypal time. “I americium rather excited astir challenging myself arsenic a coach. I person ever believed successful getting retired of one’s comfortableness zone. When I enactment with players, I effort to bash that with them. And I deliberation this is 1 measurement successful that direction,” helium stated.
Asked astir the determination to not clasp Deepti beforehand and bring her backmost astatine the auction, Nayar reasoned: “We conscionable wanted to person the purse. Our archetypal retention (capped) would person been ₹3.5 crore. We got her astatine ₹3.2 crore. It’s inactive immoderate wealth saved and allows you to get 1 other player. The mindset was we were going to get her.”
