Female auctioneer to conduct inaugural Women’s T20 League auction

The inaugural edition of the India Women’s T20 League is scheduled to be held in March this year. The player auction for the tournament will be organized by the Indian Cricket Board on February 13. As reported in the media, a woman auctioneer will conduct the auction for a T20 league for the first time in history. The auction will be very impressive, with the top female cricket players in the country competing for the biggest bids.

Malika Advani will be the face of the inaugural Indian Women’s T20 League auction. She is a Mumbai-based art collector and consultant for Modern and Contemporary Indian art. Advani is also a partner in the Art India Consultants organization. She was an auctioneer at Pundoles in Mumbai and also performed in the 2021 Pro Kabaddi League auctions.

The Men’s  Indian T20 Leaguehas had three auctioneers so far. Richard Madley was associated with the Indian Cricket Board for over a decade. He conducted the auctions from 2008 to 2018.

Before the 2019 auction, the board roped in Hugh Edmeades. He had conducted the 2023 mini-auction in December last year. Charu Sharma was roped in on a stand-in basis during the 2022 auction as a replacement for Edmeades. The latter was replaced due to medical reasons on day 1 of the auction. However, he returned during the final few minutes of the auction to complete the proceedings.

Women’s T20 League to begin on March 4

The Women’s T20 League consisted of five franchises which are based out of Mumbai, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, and Delhi. The inaugural edition will be played in Mumbai from March 4 to 26. Following this, only the Men’s edition will begin shortly.

There are a number of 409 players who have been shortlisted by the five franchises for the auction so far. Out of them, 246 are Indians while a total of 163 overseas players are also part of the list.

Each team has a purse of INR 12 crore in the maiden auction. However, the Indian Cricket Board earlier confirmed that the purse money will increase every year. Shafali Verma, Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandhana, and Deepti Sharma are among the players who have set their base price at Rs 50 lakh for the auction.