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Long reads on IPL and WPL auctions, prices and retentions, built from the same data as the rest of the site.
WPLThe Women's Premier League published its retention lists for the 2027 auction on 28 September 2026: 63 retained players across the five franchises, for a combined ₹66.85 crore of contracts. That is the largest retention
10 min read
WPLUP Warriorz are the club everyone in the room will be watching on 28 October. They have ₹3.75 crore, against ₹4.4 crore for the other four clubs put together, and eight places to fill, three of them overseas. Every other
5 min read
WPLMumbai Indians go into the WPL 2027 auction on 28 October as the league's most decorated club and, on paper, its most constrained one. They have won two of the four titles, they hold the smallest purse in the room at ₹90
5 min read
WPLRoyal Challengers Bengaluru are the reigning WPL champions, and they walk into the 2027 auction on 28 October with ₹1.15 crore, five places to fill and two overseas slots. After a first season in which they won two of ei
4 min read
WPLDelhi Capitals have played in every WPL final there has been, and have lost every one of them. Four seasons, four finals, no trophy. They arrive at the 2027 auction on 28 October with a settled core, five places to fill,
4 min read
WPLGujarat Giants have the fullest squad at the WPL 2027 auction on 28 October. They hold 15 players, which leaves only three places to fill, one of them overseas, and they have ₹1.25 crore to spend. Of the five clubs, they
4 min read
WPLThe Women's Premier League auction is on 28 October in Kochi, and the pool is out: 146 players in 28 sets, fighting for 27 places. Seven of those places are for overseas players. Most of the 146 will not be sold, and the
6 min read
IPLThe most expensive player in the history of the IPL auction is Rishabh Pant, who went to Lucknow Super Giants for ₹27 crore in 2025. The typical player bought at that same auction went for ₹1.5 crore. Both of those facts
11 min read
IPLAsk ten cricket fans to name a finisher and you will get ten answers, most of them chosen because of one innings they remember. That is how the word is usually used: a feeling about a player who seems to turn up at the e
11 min read
WPLThe Women's Premier League has held four auctions so far: the inaugural one in 2023, small ones in 2024 and 2025, and a full rebuild in 2026. Together they sold 203 players for about ₹122 crore. That total is a small num
11 min read
WPLDoes the Women's Premier League pay its players in line with what they do on the field? It is a fair question to ask of any league, and in the WPL it is easier to answer than in most, because the league is small enough t
11 min read
IPLIf you only watched the headlines, you could be forgiven for thinking the IPL auction is one event that happens every year at roughly the same scale. It is not. There are two different events that share a name. A mega au
10 min read
IPLThere is a very specific kind of heartbreak that only follows a team you can't dismiss as hopeless, and for the better part of two decades that was Royal Challengers Bengaluru's whole personality. Virat Kohli and AB de V
4 min read
IPLRoyal Challengers Bengaluru beat Gujarat Titans by 5 wickets in the 2026 IPL final at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, and in doing so retained the title they'd won for the first time just a year earlier. Gujarat
6 min read
Franchise cricket has quietly changed how it builds its backroom staff over the last decade or so, and the rise of dedicated cricket-operations roles alongside the head coach is a big part of that. Mo Bobat is a useful e
1 min read
WPLSmriti Mandhana went for 3.4 crore in the very first WPL auction, in 2023, the highest price paid in a sale that moved 73 players and a combined 53.6 crore in one afternoon. It was the number everyone quoted afterwards,
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The stuff that makes a highlight reel, a six launched over long-on, a yorker that splatters the stumps, is really just the visible tip of a much bigger and far less exciting process. What actually turns a good cricketer
1 min read