Express View: Women’s Premier League has arrived
When over 29,000 trooped in after paying to watch the Women’s Premier League second-season final at Delhi, following consistently large audiences at Bengaluru, the tournament was already an unqualified success. Modern sport’s ultimate citadel is commerce . And this season, the women’s league ticked all the right boxes . Even as Aussie great Ellyse Perry finished the MVP , home cricketers too stood out with sparkling performances.
In the final, it was off-spinner Shreyanka Patil who came up with a match-winning spell . Shafali Verma and Richa Ghosh hit sixes that landed deep in the stands , matching big names from Australia, West Indies and England. Harmanpreet Kaur struck a memorable century, which is a good omen for the India captain, and Smriti Mandhana marshalled her troops to land her first title.
With the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh later this year an immediate goal, Jemimah Rodrigues adding a new dimension to her batting and Yastika Bhatia proving she’s reliable both as opener and wicketkeeper, is crucial to the Team India jigsaw. Deepti Sharma delivered on her potential as a world-class all-rounder, not only with crucial wickets with her off-spin, but also by clearing the boundary frequently. The big-hitting was remarkable , of course . But this was also about steely nerves , as when little-known Sajana Sajeevan hit the first ball on her WPL debut — the last one of the match — for six because nothing less would have done. Leg-spinner Asha Sobhana was another find with five wickets to turn a match in the final few overs.
The fielding standards in the women’s game can improve no doubt and that will give all five franchises , including the three owned by IPL teams, their next goals. The women’s game will evolve at its own pace , set its own power benchmarks and grow a vocabulary and style of its own. But for now, the WPL has delivered on sport’s most fundamental requirement — four exciting finishes went to the wire . And it spawned fandoms with celebrations spilling onto the streets .