New Delhi, Nov 27 UP Warriorz director of cricket Kshemal Waingankar said it was "too early to say" who would lead the side in the upcoming WPL season, after buying back Deepti Sharma and including multi-time World Cup-winning captain Meg Lanning.
At the mega auction in New Delhi, Deepti, the Player of the Tournament in the recent Women’s ODI World Cup, became the joint second-most expensive player in WPL auction history after UPW used their Right to Match (RTM) card to reclaim her for INR 3.2 crore. UPW also added Australia Meg for INR 1.9 crore.
“We will discuss that, I mean it's too early to say. It depends on how the squad comes through and we'll have to have a conversation. We'll have to have a conversation with Deepti, understand the dynamics with the leadership, and we haven't thought that through yet.”
“Definitely expected the price to be in the range of what we saw. As you see, we tried to go for Amelia Kerr, and she went up to three crores. It’s the premium that you pay for high quality spin bowling all-rounder and there was no doubt that we wanted her back,” said Waingankar in the press conference.
Asked on why Deepti wasn’t retained before, Waingankar said, “There were certain dynamics in the entire auction process and the retention process. So since we had Abhishek now coming at the helm, I think we wanted to give him a clean slate and to be able to figure out what his vision is and try to build a squad together.”
“We had no doubt that we'd be able to bring Deepti back, which we have and we're very delighted to be able to bring her back as well. To add to that, we've also been able to bring Sophie back and a leader like Meg Lanning in the mix as well. So I think so far it's played out well, let's see how the rest of the auction goes.”
Michael Klinger, the Gujarat Giants head coach, was impressed with buying New Zealand all-rounder Sophie Devine for INR 2 crore and India pacer Renuka Singh Thakur for INR 60 lakh.
“It adds eight overs of really high quality bowling and they add experience due to both of them being World Cup winners. Renuka can give us a really good start with the new ball and Sophie can bowl in all three phases and bat anywhere from one to six. Two picks were really important for us in terms of giving us that flexibility and now we'll see how we go in the coming sets,” he said.
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