One hundred and fifty players walked into the WPL auction in Kochi this week. Twenty-seven walked out with a team. The rest walked out with nothing but a long flight home, and that gap is exactly why the BCCI is now talking about WPL expansion.
Board secretary Devajit Saikia said so plainly on Thursday, a day after the WPL 2027 auction. The board will hold brainstorming sessions from next year on increasing the number of teams, he said in a video posted on the WPL’s social media handles. Five teams, in his words, are “really less compared to the number of supply chain of girls cricketers”.
Five teams, and a queue that keeps getting longer
The arithmetic is hard to argue with. The Women’s Premier League launched in 2023 with five franchises: Mumbai Indians, Delhi Capitals, UP Warriorz, Gujarat Giants and Royal Challengers Bengaluru. Around 150 players went under the hammer in Kochi, and only 27 slots were on offer across those five squads. Saikia’s point was not just about the players either. More teams would mean more coaches, more selectors, more support staff, more of everything around the edges of the league.
The 2027 edition itself is already locked in, running from January 14 to February 7. So nothing changes for the coming season. The expansion conversation, if it turns into anything concrete, would shape the league after that.
Why WPL expansion talk matters now
Here is the part that makes this more than a routine board comment. Not long ago, the BCCI’s public line was patience. IPL chairman Arun Dhumal had told PTI there were no immediate plans to add teams, arguing the league needed to consolidate first. Saikia’s comments this week mark a clear shift in tone, from “not yet” to “let’s talk about it”.
The context for that shift is sitting in plain sight. India are the reigning women’s ODI world champions, a point Saikia himself made, and the WPL is now routinely described as the second biggest women’s franchise league in the world after the IPL. The league’s media rights went for Rs 951 crore for five years before a ball was bowled, as reported at launch. Growth, in other words, is no longer a hope. It is a backlog.
The depth is visible on the field too. India women finished a 6-0 sweep of Zimbabwe this week, with different players starring in different games, which is exactly the kind of pipeline a bigger league would feed on.
The 15-year-old who made the point better than any official could
If Saikia needed an example of what the league is unearthing, the Kochi auction handed him one. Delhi Capitals picked up 15-year-old uncapped all-rounder Uma Kashvi for Rs 10 lakh. A teenager who was not on most radars a year ago now has a professional contract, and Saikia called it proof of what the WPL is doing for the women’s game in India.
That is the other side of the expansion argument, and it is worth sitting with. Every new franchise is not just a new logo and a new jersey. It is roughly a dozen more domestic players getting a professional season, a salary, and a stage. For a system where the jump from domestic cricket to the national team has historically been a leap across a canyon, those extra rungs matter.
None of this is decided yet, and that matters too. Saikia promised discussions, not teams. There is no announcement of a new franchise, no tender, no city, no price tag. Anyone telling you which city gets the next team is guessing. What is real is the direction of travel: the board that once said wait is now saying let’s talk.
It has been a loud week for Indian cricket at both ends. The men sealed their T20I series in Wellington on Tuesday, and the women keep stacking up wins of their own. So the question for next year is not whether women’s cricket in India has the players. Kochi answered that, 150 to 27. The question is whether the league grows fast enough to hold them. On Thursday, for the first time, the BCCI sounded like it wants to find out.