Gujarat Giants at the WPL 2027 auction: three places left in the fullest squad

Gujarat Giants have the fullest squad at the WPL 2027 auction on 28 October. They hold 15 players, which leaves only three places to fill, one of them overseas, and they have ₹1.25 crore to spend. Of the five clubs, they are the one with the least to fix.

It is a long way from where they started. This piece covers the club's history, who it kept and let go, and the players CricOptics's forecast thinks it may pursue. The first three parts come from match results and the league's lists; the last is a simulation and is labelled as one.

A short history: from the bottom of the table to the playoffs

Gujarat were the most expensive franchise in the January 2023 rights sale, bought by Adani Sportsline, and they started with a plan around one player. At the first auction they paid ₹3.2 crore for Ashleigh Gardner, their biggest buy, and she has been the club's best player since: 811 WPL runs, the most for the club and just ahead of Beth Mooney's 780, and 31 wickets, also the most of any Gujarat bowler.

The early seasons were hard. In 2023 Gujarat won two of eight games and finished joint bottom with Bangalore. In 2024 they won two again and finished last outright. Both times the table showed a side with a few stars and not enough around them.

The rebuild shows in the last two seasons. In 2025 Gujarat won four and lost four, finished third and played the eliminator, losing to Mumbai by 47 runs. In 2026 they improved to five wins from eight, took second place on the table, and played the eliminator again, losing to Delhi by seven wickets. They have yet to reach a final.

Behind Gardner and Mooney in the run charts is Harleen Deol with 482, who has since moved to UP Warriorz, and Laura Wolvaardt with 342, who is now at Delhi. In the bowling, Tanuja Kanwar has taken 23 wickets, Kashvee Gautam 19 and Sophie Devine 17.

Who they retained

The league lists 15 retained players for ₹13.75 crore, with ₹1.25 crore left. Five of the 15 are overseas.

The top three are the overseas stars: Gardner on ₹3.5 crore, Mooney, the wicketkeeper-batter, on ₹2.5 crore and Devine on ₹2.0 crore. That is ₹8.0 crore, 58 per cent of the bill. Georgia Wareham is next at ₹1.0 crore. After that the contracts are small: Bharati Fulmali at ₹70 lakh, Kashvee Gautam at ₹65 lakh, Renuka Singh at ₹60 lakh, Kim Garth and Yastika Bhatia at ₹50 lakh each, Anushka Sharma and Tanuja Kanwar at ₹45 lakh each, Rajeshwari Gayakwad at ₹40 lakh, Kanika Ahuja at ₹30 lakh and Happy Kumari and Jintimani Kalita at ₹10 lakh each.

Several of these show how far the 2026 auction repriced the league. Kashvee Gautam was ₹2.0 crore in the earlier seasons and is retained at ₹65 lakh. Renuka Singh, bought for ₹1.5 crore at the first auction, is on ₹60 lakh. Yastika Bhatia, ₹1.5 crore in her earlier seasons, is on ₹50 lakh.

By role, Gujarat's 13 identified players are five bowlers, three all-rounders, three batters and two wicketkeepers (Mooney and Bhatia). It is the most even spread of the five clubs.

Who they released

Four players left. Danielle Wyatt-Hodge, the England batter on ₹50 lakh in 2026, is the one with the profile, and she does not appear in the pool list we hold. Ayushi Soni and Titas Sadhu, both on ₹30 lakh, and Shivani Singh, a wicketkeeper on ₹10 lakh, are in the pool, and the forecast gives each of them almost no chance of being sold.

The releases free no money to speak of. Gujarat's problem, if it is one, is that they have 15 players they like.

Who they may target

With three places to fill and ₹1.25 crore, Gujarat can spend at most about ₹1.05 crore on one player, after keeping ₹10 lakh back for each of the other two spots. That is the biggest single-player ceiling of any club except UP Warriorz.

CricOptics's forecast replays the auction 400 times, using each club's purse, places and the roles it kept. For Gujarat it returns a short list. The overseas place goes to an all-rounder or a bowler: Orla Prendergast, an all-rounder with a ₹30 lakh base, is the name Gujarat buy most often, in about two runs in ten, and Grace Harris, who Gujarat bid for in more than half the runs, is usually bought by UP Warriorz first. Sophie Molineux, an all-rounder at ₹50 lakh, and Nonkululeko Mlaba, a bowler at ₹30 lakh, appear a little less often.

For the Indian places the model points at Devika Vaidya, a bowler with a ₹30 lakh base whom the simulation sells in about seven runs in ten, and at the cheap end of the pool, where players start at ₹10 lakh and often finish close to it.

What to watch

Gujarat's season could turn on a single bid. The overseas place is the only one where the club can add someone who changes a match, and the price it will take to win her is the open question. If UP Warriorz get Harris, as the simulation expects, Gujarat have to go to the next name.

The forecast has not been backtested, because no earlier WPL auction in our data holds its pool and base prices, and it cannot see which players a club actually wants. It describes a typical outcome and should be read that way.