WPL 2027 auction: the players most likely to move the room, overseas and Indian

The 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 names that decide how the room feels are a small handful. This piece goes through who they are, which clubs have the money to chase them, and where CricOptics's own forecast thinks the price will land.

Two cautions before the names. The forecast is a simulation of the whole auction, set by set, using each club's purse, open places and squad gaps, what WPL players have fetched before, and recent T20 form where we hold it. It has not been backtested, because no earlier WPL auction in our data has its base prices or pool. And it cannot see which players a club actually wants. Treat every figure below as a typical outcome, not a prediction you could bet on.

The room: five clubs, ₹8.15 crore

The money is lopsided. UP Warriorz have ₹3.75 crore left and eight places to fill, three of them overseas. Every other club is working with about a crore: Royal Challengers Bengaluru ₹1.15 crore, Delhi Capitals ₹1.10 crore, Gujarat Giants ₹1.25 crore and Mumbai Indians ₹0.90 crore. Gujarat have only three places open, Delhi and Bengaluru five each, Mumbai six, and Mumbai have no overseas place left at all after trading for Tara Norris from UP. (Figures are from the league's own auction page.)

That matters more than any single player. When one club can spend three times what its rivals can, the clubs behind it often cannot keep bidding past a certain point, and the price a player reaches depends on how many clubs can still afford to compete. Across 400 simulated auctions, CricOptics sees the clubs spending about ₹7.8 crore of the ₹8.15 crore and filling about 24 or 25 of the 27 places.

The pool itself is mostly cheap. 106 players have a base price of ₹10 lakh, 30 start at ₹30 lakh, four at ₹20 lakh, four at ₹40 lakh and two at ₹50 lakh. For comparison, the most the league has ever paid is ₹3.4 crore, for Smriti Mandhana in 2023. Nobody in this pool is likely to come near that.

Overseas: seven places, and one name the model keeps picking

There are 27 overseas players for seven overseas places, so most will go home unsold. The two highest base prices in the whole pool are overseas: Sophie Molineux and Sophia Dunkley, both at ₹50 lakh.

**Grace Harris** is the clearest case in the forecast. Released by Bengaluru at ₹75 lakh, the same price UP paid in 2023, Harris starts at only ₹30 lakh but is sold in 99 percent of the simulated auctions, to UP Warriorz in about 96 of every 100. The usual price is around ₹1.15 crore, and in the cheaper runs it is nearer ₹35 lakh. UP have the biggest purse and three overseas places open; Bengaluru bid in about eight runs in ten and Gujarat and Delhi in about half, but they rarely win her.

**Sophia Dunkley** was bought by Gujarat for ₹60 lakh in 2023 and comes in at ₹50 lakh base. She is sold in about 58 percent of runs, at a typical ₹80 lakh, with UP the most likely buyer.

**Sophie Molineux** sits at the same ₹50 lakh base, and is the player the forecast is least sure about. WPL-only results rate her below her base, but her recent T20 form, including internationals, lifts her value. The model gives her roughly a 77 percent chance of being sold, at a likely ₹75 lakh, with UP the club most likely to buy and Bengaluru the next most likely to bid. If you believe clubs will pay for reputation and captaincy, the model is probably underrating her: those cannot be measured in this data.

**Orla Prendergast** has no WPL record, so her value comes from recent form and from what first-time WPL players have fetched. The forecast sells her in about 66 percent of runs, at around ₹80 lakh. It is a low-confidence number, and she is the kind of player where a single club's interest could move it a long way in either direction.

Others to watch: Nonkululeko Mlaba (a 42 percent chance, likely ₹55 lakh), Charli Knott, Samantha Bates, and Jess Jonassen and Heather Graham in the same late set, where purses will have shrunk.

Indian players: the order of the sets matters

The pool's 119 Indian players are mostly uncapped, and the capped group is where the money is. Two things stand out.

**Devika Vaidya** was bought by UP Warriorz for ₹1.4 crore in 2023, the second-highest price paid for anyone in this pool. The market model values her at around ₹1.1 crore, the highest of any Indian player in the pool. Yet the forecast's likely price is only about ₹35 lakh. The reason is her place in the order: she is in set 12. By then the clubs have spent money and filled places, so there are fewer bidders left and the price falls toward the base. She is sold in about seven runs in ten, so she will almost certainly find a club, but the set order may cost her.

**Kiran Navgire** and **G Kamalini** were both released. Navgire cost UP ₹60 lakh in 2026; the forecast sells her about a quarter of the time at around ₹40 lakh. Kamalini cost Mumbai ₹1.6 crore at the 2025 auction, but her 2026 contract was ₹50 lakh, and the forecast sees her as a base-price player, sold in only a small share of runs. Shweta Sehrawat, another release at ₹50 lakh, is also in the pool.

Among the wicketkeepers, Nuzhat Parween shows how thin the uncapped market is to read: with no WPL record the forecast has little to go on, and gives her about a one-in-three chance at a typical ₹55 lakh. Treat those as the model's guess about first-time players, not a view on her.

The uncapped group: lots of names, little to go on

The pool has 110 uncapped players, 106 of them starting at ₹10 lakh, and most have no WPL record and no overall T20 record in our data, because Cricsheet carries very little Indian domestic women's cricket. The forecast gives the best of them a one-in-four chance of being sold, at around ₹40 to ₹55 lakh. That is a cautious reading of past auctions, where first-time players have occasionally gone far above their base. Expect a few of those surprises, and expect the model to miss them.

What would change the picture

Three things the forecast cannot know. First, a right to match, if the league allows one: it would let a club take back a player it released at the winning price, which changes who ends up buying. Second, whether a club decides to hold money back for a late set. Third, plain appetite: one franchise deciding it must have a particular player. The set order, the purses and the open overseas places are facts. The rest is judgement, and the live auction page and the forecast on the WPL 2027 auction page will let you check the model against what actually happens.