Does the WPL pay for performance? Contracts against form, player by player

Does the Women's Premier League pay its players in line with what they do on the field? It is a fair question to ask of any league, and in the WPL it is easier to answer than in most, because the league is small enough to look at every player. There are five teams, 84 players in the current squads, and a ball-by-ball record of every match from the last two seasons. Of those players, 74 have a contract figure in the data.

This article sets contracts against performance for those players. It describes the pay scale as it stands now, shows who sits at the top and what they have done, looks at how closely pay follows form across the league and how that compares with the IPL, and picks out the players who have produced the most for what they are paid. It also spends time on what the measure cannot see, because a comparison like this is only as honest as its caveats. All amounts are nominal rupees.

What the league pays

Across the 74 players with a contract figure in the data, the combined bill is ₹66.65 crore. The median contract is ₹0.5 crore, which means half of the players are on fifty lakh or less. Thirty-eight of the 74 are on ₹0.5 crore or less. Twenty are on ₹1 crore or more, 13 are on ₹2 crore or more, and five are on ₹3 crore or more.

Those five are the top of the scale. Three players are on ₹3.5 crore: Ashleigh Gardner of Gujarat Giants, Nat Sciver-Brunt of Mumbai Indians and Smriti Mandhana of Royal Challengers Bengaluru. Deepti Sharma of UP Warriorz is on ₹3.2 crore and Amelia Kerr of Mumbai Indians on ₹3.0 crore. Together those five players cost ₹16.7 crore, a quarter of the whole league's bill, and they are five out of 74.

Below them comes a second tier. Richa Ghosh of Royal Challengers Bengaluru is on ₹2.75 crore. Beth Mooney of Gujarat Giants and Harmanpreet Kaur of Mumbai Indians are each on ₹2.5 crore, Shikha Pandey of UP Warriorz on ₹2.4 crore, and then three players on ₹2.2 crore each, Jemimah Rodrigues, Marizanne Kapp and Shafali Verma, all of Delhi Capitals, with Sophie Devine of Gujarat Giants on ₹2.0 crore. After those, the contracts fall quickly. The scale is steep at the top and flat below it.

By role the averages are far apart. The 16 all-rounders with contracts average ₹1.5 crore. The five wicketkeepers average ₹1.27 crore. The 24 batters average ₹0.88 crore and the 27 bowlers average ₹0.56 crore. All-rounders are paid nearly three times what bowlers are, on average, which will matter later when we look at who gives the most for the money.

How performance is measured here

To compare pay with performance you need a single number for performance, and any single number is a compromise. CricOptics uses a measure called form, which is runs above a replacement player over the last two WPL seasons, 2025 and 2026, with the latest season counted in full and the earlier one at half weight.

For a batter, form is the runs scored minus what a replacement batter would make from the same balls. The replacement batter scores 15 per cent slower than the league's average. For a bowler it is what a replacement bowler would have conceded from the same balls, who is 15 per cent more expensive than the league average, minus what the bowler actually conceded, plus ten runs for every wicket. Batting and bowling are added together, so an all-rounder gets credit for both.

Two things about this are choices, not measurements: the 15 per cent margin and the ten runs per wicket. They put batters and bowlers on one scale, and changing them would shift the balance between the two. The measure does not count fielding, wicketkeeping or captaincy, and it does not know where a player bats, who the opposition was or what the pitch was doing. It is a reasonable first look at who produces runs and wickets, and no more than that.

Does pay follow form?

Take the 59 players with a contract and at least five matches in the two seasons, rank them by contract and by form, and ask how closely the two orderings agree. The answer is a rank correlation of 0.52, where 1.0 would mean the two lists are in the same order and 0 would mean no relationship at all. In this league, pay and form agree moderately well.

For comparison, the same calculation for the IPL, over 176 players with a contract and at least five matches, gives 0.25. In the IPL the connection between what a player is paid and the form measure is much weaker than in the WPL. There are reasons that could be true and the data cannot choose between them: IPL contracts include a lot of retention salaries and carried-over deals from earlier years, the league is much larger, and its stars are often paid for reputation. In the WPL the squads are small, the contracts mostly come from one recent reset, and the connection is tighter. It is a comparison of how well a simple measure tracks pay in two very different leagues, not a verdict on either.

Now look at how the ten best-paid players rank on form among those 59. Nat Sciver-Brunt is second, Amelia Kerr is third and Shikha Pandey ninth. Ashleigh Gardner is fourteenth, Deepti Sharma nineteenth, Harmanpreet Kaur twenty-third and Smriti Mandhana twenty-fourth. Richa Ghosh is twenty-ninth, Jemimah Rodrigues thirty-third and Beth Mooney forty-third. Three of the ten are in the top ten on form, and eight of the ten are in the top thirty of the 59. The best-paid players are mostly in the upper half of the league, but there is a lot of spread inside the group, from second place to forty-third.

The best-paid players and what they have done

It helps to put numbers next to the names, with the usual warning that these are totals from two seasons.

Nat Sciver-Brunt, ₹3.5 crore, has scored 844 runs at a strike rate of 152 and taken 20 wickets at an economy of 8.62. Her form of 308 is the second highest in the league. Amelia Kerr, ₹3.0 crore, has scored 147 runs and taken 32 wickets at an economy of 7.65, a form of 306, third in the league, almost entirely from bowling. Ashleigh Gardner, ₹3.5 crore, has 487 runs at 152 and 14 wickets at an economy of 9.0, a form of 188.

Smriti Mandhana, ₹3.5 crore, has scored 574 runs at a strike rate of 147, a form of 112. Deepti Sharma, ₹3.2 crore, has 253 runs at a strike rate of 117 and 15 wickets at 8.74, a form of 143. Richa Ghosh, ₹2.75 crore, has 419 runs at a strike rate of 164, the highest of the ten, a form of 86.

Harmanpreet Kaur, ₹2.5 crore, has 644 runs at 153, a form of 122. Shikha Pandey, ₹2.4 crore, has just 58 runs but 18 wickets at an economy of 7.52, a form of 211. Jemimah Rodrigues, ₹2.2 crore, has 410 runs at 138, a form of 60. Beth Mooney, ₹2.5 crore, has 495 runs at a strike rate of 125, a form of 30, the lowest of the group.

It is worth being careful with that last set of figures. Mooney is a wicketkeeper and an opening batter, and Mandhana opens too, and the form measure compares each batter with the league's average rate over all the balls they face. A batter who anchors an innings from the top will, by construction, score below the average rate. That is a real contribution to a team and the measure does not value it much. It also does not count Mooney's wicketkeeping. A low form score here is not a finding that a player is poor value; it is a finding that her runs, measured this way, are not far above a replacement. Whether that is the right way to measure her is a question for the reader.

Who produces most for the money

Reverse the question and ask which players have produced the most form per crore of contract. To keep the list sensible, count only players on at least ₹0.5 crore, with at least five matches, and positive form. Below that, a very small contract makes the ratio huge for almost anyone.

At the top of the list is Shabnim Ismail of Mumbai Indians, on ₹0.6 crore, with a form of 251: about 419 runs of form per crore. She has taken 15 wickets in the two seasons. Nadine de Klerk of Royal Challengers Bengaluru, ₹0.65 crore, has 133 runs and 16 wickets, a form of 235, about 361 per crore. Lauren Bell, also Royal Challengers, ₹0.9 crore, has 12 wickets for a form of 261, about 290 per crore. Kashvee Gautam of Gujarat Giants, ₹0.65 crore, has 110 runs and 19 wickets, 286 per crore. Renuka Singh of Gujarat Giants, ₹0.6 crore, has 13 runs and 17 wickets, also about 286.

After them come Sophie Ecclestone of UP Warriorz, ₹0.85 crore, 16 wickets and a form of 193, about 227 per crore; Shreyanka Patil of Royal Challengers, ₹0.6 crore, 11 wickets, about 219; and Grace Harris of Royal Challengers, ₹0.75 crore, 400 runs and 10 wickets, about 213. Below ₹0.5 crore the list continues in the same vein, with Nandani Sharma of Delhi Capitals, on ₹0.2 crore, a form of 209.

The pattern is obvious: seven of the top eight on this list are bowlers. That is not an accident of the formula alone. Bowlers are paid far less than all-rounders in this league, an average of ₹0.56 crore against ₹1.5 crore, and a wicket is worth ten runs in the form measure, so a bowler who takes wickets at a reasonable economy scores well against a small contract. Whether the market is underpaying bowlers or the measure is generous to them is a fair debate. The ten-run wicket is a judgement and a lower value would change the list.

The all-rounders at the top of the form table

At the top of the league's form table, the leading names are mostly all-rounders. Marizanne Kapp of Delhi Capitals is first with a form of 319, from 155 runs and 18 wickets, on ₹2.2 crore. Sciver-Brunt and Kerr follow. Chinelle Henry of Delhi Capitals is next at 274, on ₹1.3 crore, with 271 runs and 20 wickets. Sophie Devine of Gujarat Giants is fifth at 264, on ₹2.0 crore, with 243 runs and 17 wickets. After them come Bell, Ismail and de Klerk.

Several things explain that. A player who bats and bowls is credited for both, and so has two chances to accumulate form. Most of the players listed have played between 15 and 19 of their teams' matches over the two seasons, so their totals rest on a full run of games. And the all-rounders are the group the league pays most, so the form table and the pay table overlap more among all-rounders than they do for anyone else. It is the part of the league where the market and the measure agree best.

What this does not show

The honest limits are bigger than the list of findings. The measure covers two seasons, and a WPL season is short, with each team playing a small number of matches, so one innings or one spell can move a player a long way. The sample for each player is a few hundred balls at most.

Contracts are also not a straightforward price. A player's figure is whatever she was last contracted at, whether through an auction, a retention or a deal agreed outside the room, and some of these were agreed years apart in different market conditions. A contract tells you what a team agreed to pay at a point in time, not what the player would cost today.

The data lacks things that would change the picture. Nationality is not recorded for about half of the league's players, so there is nothing here on overseas players and how teams balance their squads. Roles are partly derived from the squad lists. Fielding and keeping are not counted. The measure does not know batting position, the quality of the opposition, or the match situation. And a small number of players with contracts have too few matches to be ranked and are left out of the correlation and the value list.

None of this makes the comparison useless, but it does mean that no player should be judged on one number. One more gap is worth knowing about. The squad lists in the data are partial for the WPL: Ellyse Perry and Annabel Sutherland, for example, appear among the 2027 retentions but not in the 2026 squad list CricOptics holds, so their contracts are not in this comparison. That is why a few well-known names are missing from the tables above. A reader looking for a verdict on any individual should treat it as a starting point: a way to find players whose pay and output look far apart, and then ask why.

The picture in short

The WPL's pay scale is steep at the top and flat below it: five players on ₹3 crore or more, and half of the 74 on ₹0.5 crore or less. Pay follows form moderately well, a rank correlation of 0.52, much more tightly than in the IPL's 0.25 on the same measure. The best-paid group is mostly in the upper half of the league on form, with a few notable exceptions where the measure's blind spots probably matter. The players producing the most per crore are mostly bowlers on small contracts, and the all-rounders who lead the form table are also the best paid.

If you want to see where any one player sits, the Value page ranks every current WPL player by form and by contract, and lets you build a side within a budget. The numbers above come from the same data.