The former Indian cricketer Aakash Chopra made a huge prediction for the Upcoming WPL 2024 auction, which is scheduled to be held on Saturday.
Aakash Chopra’s prediction on WPL 2024 auction
With BCCI planned to host the WPL 2024 auction on December 9 in Mumbai, the former cricketer Aakash Chopra has analyzed and highlighted the players who could be the expensive players of the auction.
A total of 165 cricketers will be participating in the auction in Mumbai out of which 104 players are Indians and 61 players are overseas including 15 from associate nations.
Following the successful completion of the first edition of the Women’s Premier League last year, BCCI decided to host the tournament with the same set of 5 teams.
Deandra Dottin and Kim Garth registered for the auction with a base price of INR 50 lakh which is also the highest price in the auction. On the other hand, Annabel Sutherland, Georgia Wareham, Amy Jones, and Shabnim Ismail have registered for INR 40 lakh as their base price.
On this occasion, the former cricketer Aakash Chopra analyzed the auction and picked up the players that could trigger the auction to its highest limit.
“I am going with Chamari Athapaththu and Deandra Dottin. Between the two, because they are multi-dimensional players. There is a unique thing actually in women’s cricket.”
“It is not something that we see very often in men’s cricket, which is the multi-dimensional cricketing skills. I think all women are multi-taskers and most men are very uni-dimensional. So, these two,” he said.
During the WPL auction 2023, the Sri Lankan captain Athapaththu was unpicked in the auction, which stunned the cricket world. On the other hand, Dottin was auctioned for INR 60 lakhs by Gujarat Giants. However, she was ruled out as she was unable to obtain medical clearance before the deadline.
“This whole tournament is littered with some great all-rounders and these two were missing out in action last year and they will add value. I mean Deandra Dottin can strike the ball and so can ChaChamari Athapaththu, to be honest,” he said.
Speaking about Dottin from Gujarat, he said, “I think they got a replacement for her now if I remember correctly. So, I think we didn’t hear the full story of what happened there and I am not going to speculate either. But now she is back in the auction.”
“Gujarat, to be fair, their auction strategy was flawed to begin with when we saw their team last year. It was just there for everyone to see that we were not going to get it right. Their auction strategy was not making a lot of sense and a lot of big-ticket buyers and very little money was spent on the Indians.”
“So they were the only franchise that didn’t target a key Indian player and so now they have to change strategy and figure out a way which is never easy in the smaller auction. I don’t know why they let her go, but given a choice, they would want her back, because they have released Kim Garth and Annabel Sutherland.”
“Both are like a medium-pace all-rounder category, which Deandra Dottin does the job as well, goes around the stumps, bowls wide and she is very, very experienced. You would want her to be in the action for sure,” he concluded.
