Describing India as the “spiritual home of cricket”, Australia superstar Ellyse Perry feels the Women’s Premier League (WPL), which is scheduled to begin on March 4, will be the next frontier for the sport.
Perry, who was bought by Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) for a whooping amount of INR 1.7 crore at the inaugural WPL auction, stated that the Women’s Premier League is a once in a lifetime kind of opportunity for female cricketers.
Speaking in a press conference that was held recently in the Aussie women’s camp currently stationed in South Africa for the ongoing edition of Women’s T20 World Cup, Perry revealed how impactful India has been in developing cricket as a whole.
“From my perspective, I don’t think any of us ever led the conversation in terms of monetary value. I think there’s something at play that’s much bigger than that. Of course, remuneration and the chance to earn that kind of money is wonderful, but much larger than that, I think, is just the general growth of the sport right around the world,” said Perry.
Throwing some light on what India is to the sport, she further added, “India is kind of, I guess, the spiritual home of cricket in a lot of senses. And I think now that women are starting to have a really strong presence in the Indian market and also in the Indian game, that is so much more important than any kind of dollar value that is placed on any player. So from that perspective, the chat was just around wanting to be involved.”
The top-ranked all-rounder also termed the players’ auction a “weird” concept to swallow.
“Of course, after the auction, those discussions come in about certain value and how much people are sold for, which in itself is a weird kind of concept to swallow. But yeah, I just think it’s so much bigger than that. The discussion from us as a group was just what it’s going to do for the game, not so much what it’s going to do for an individual,” concluded Perry.
