Women’s Premier League: New hats, new stage!

Mithali Raj (second from left) with the Gujarat Giants team management during the inaugural Women’s Premier League (WPL) auction at the Jio World Convention Centre on Monday. Pic/Twitter

The inaugural Women's Premier League (WPL) will kick-start with the game between Mumbai Indians (MI) and Gujarat Giants (GG) in Navi Mumbai on March 4. As WPL will provide 87 promising cricketers a big platform to showcase their talent, it will also be a new chapter for two legends of the game - ex-India captains Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami. Mithali is mentor of the Gujarat team while Jhulan will be shouldering the responsibility as MI's mentor and bowling coach.

Natural progression

Mithali, 40, who has 10,868 international runs under her belt across all three formats, is prepared for her new innings. "It is not much of a challenge because there were many stages of my career when I have been able to share my experience with younger players and players of my age group. So in a way, this is just a natural stage to move on from retirement," Mithali said after the auction on Monday when mid-day asked her about her new challenge.

About the auction, Mithali said: "I enjoyed it. It's a first-time experience to be in the auction, not just to put in the hard yards personally for the franchise that I am part of - Gujarat Giants - but also to see how the other franchises have done."

MI mentor Jhulan Goswami

Meanwhile, Jhulan emphasised the grooming aspect. "We want young cricketers to be groomed for the future. And at the same time, they need to get enough opportunities to learn from those capped players, who they share dressing rooms with like Harmanpreet Kaur, Natalie Sciver and Hayley Matthews," she remarked.

‘We are happy'

Jhulan, 40, who claimed 355 international scalps, spoke about whether MI ticked all the boxes in the auction. "Absolutely. We have all quality cricketers. At the end of the day, we are happy as a group, we picked those players who we wanted to take. We have players for all the slots, so we are happy as a group."

Also read: Smriti Mandhana, Harmanpreet Kaur, Shafali Verma set to soar in WPL auction

MI bid successfully for current India captain Kaur for Rs 1.80 crore, but lost her deputy in the national team Smriti Mandhana (Rs 3.40 crore) to Royal Challengers Bangalore.

But both Mithali and Jhulan want to build their respective teams for the next few years. The former revealed why she went for uncapped and U-19 players: "You also need to have one eye on the future, the U-19 players, who just won the first ICC World Cup. It will give them exposure of being part of that sort of a set-up and get a professional approach."