Bengaluru: The second edition of the Women's Premier League, beginning here on Friday with a high-profile match between defending champions Mumbai Indians and runners-up Delhi Capitals, will be optimistic about meeting its existential purpose of giving a wider platform to promising home-grown talents.
The foreign stars glittered brightly in the inaugural edition held in Mumbai, and the Indians will be hoping to hog some of the limelight this year as the tournament takes a multi-city format shape with New Delhi being the other host city.
While Capitals' skipper Meg Lanning, who has now retired from international cricket, took the Orange Cap last year for the highest run-getter, the Purple Cap went to Hayley Matthews of Mumbai for taking 16 wickets.
Amid this surge of overseas players, the Indian cricketers generally struggled for consistency and impact in the previous year, but now some of the young domestic stars will eye this WPL with genuine hope.
Let's take Shreyanka Patil of Royal Challengers Bangalore as a case in point. During WPL 2023, she was a wide-eyed young cricketer who was awestruck to rub shoulders with some of the finest names in women's cricket.
She played seven matches, but the spotlight was understandably on players such as Smriti Mandhana or Ellyse Perry or Sophie Devine. But in the last 10 months or so, Patil has built a place of her own. She earned her maiden India cap in both Test and ODIs in December last year, besides making her mark in the Caribbean Premier League for the Guyana Amazon Warriors.
In this interim, the 21-year-old has also added more arrows to her quiver in the form of power-hitting at the death overs. Titas Sadhu of Delhi Capitals offers a similar story.
Sadhu did not get a single game despite being in the squad but this year the West Bengal player has a changed profile. After making her India debut in the Hangzhou Asian Games against Bangladesh, the 19-year-old has grown in stature. The medium pacer's 4-1-6-3 spell helped India beat Sri Lanka in the Asian Games final while defending a meagre target of 117.
Sadhu proved that that performance was no flash in the pan when she grabbed four for 17 against Australia in Mumbai last month, powering India to a rare T20I win over the Aussies. So, it will be hard for Delhi management to overlook her claim to be in the starting eleven against Mumbai, or at least in a few subsequent matches. The Capitals also have in their ranks a talent who is eager to stamp her mark in the WPL Minnu Mani.