Mumbai Indians at the WPL 2027 auction: two titles, the smallest purse and no overseas place left

Mumbai Indians go into the WPL 2027 auction on 28 October as the league's most decorated club and, on paper, its most constrained one. They have won two of the four titles, they hold the smallest purse in the room at ₹90 lakh, and they have no overseas place left. Six spots remain in an 18-player squad, and all six will have to be Indian players.

This piece goes through where the club has been, who it kept, who it let go, and which players CricOptics's forecast suggests it will chase. Every figure comes from our own tables and the league's published lists. The targets section is a simulation, not inside knowledge, and is labelled as such.

A short history: two titles in four seasons

Mumbai Indians were one of the five franchises sold in the WPL's January 2023 rights auction, and the club is run by the same group behind the IPL side of the same name. It bought its way into the league's first auction with an overseas core. Nat Sciver-Brunt cost ₹3.2 crore in 2023, one of the biggest bids of that first room, and she has been the club's top run scorer ever since, with 1,348 WPL runs for Mumbai. Harmanpreet Kaur is next with 1,193 and Hayley Matthews third with 867.

The results followed. In 2023 Mumbai won six of their eight league games, finished second on the table behind Delhi, beat UP Warriorz by 72 runs in the eliminator and then Delhi by seven wickets in the final. In 2024 they were second in the league at 5 wins and 3 defeats, but lost the eliminator to Royal Challengers Bangalore by five runs. In 2025 they were level with Delhi on five wins from eight, took the eliminator against Gujarat by 47 runs and beat Delhi again in the final, by eight runs, for a second title.

2026 was the first season they were not in the knockouts. Mumbai won three games and lost five, finishing fourth. It is the only losing league record they have had, and it came in the first season after a mega auction in which the squad was largely rebuilt.

With the ball, the club's best figures belong to Amelia Kerr, who has taken 54 wickets for them, followed by Matthews with 46 and Sciver-Brunt with 40.

Who they retained

The league's table lists 12 players held by Mumbai and ₹14.1 crore spent against the ₹15 crore cap, and the list below accounts for all of it.

The core is the one you would expect. Sciver-Brunt is on ₹3.5 crore, Kerr on ₹3.0 crore, Harmanpreet Kaur on ₹2.5 crore and Matthews on ₹1.75 crore. Those four are ₹10.75 crore, about 76 per cent of the ₹14.1 crore, which makes Mumbai the most top-heavy of the five clubs by a distance.

Below them comes Amanjot Kaur, the Indian all-rounder, at ₹1 crore, and then small contracts: Sajeevan Sajana at ₹75 lakh, Shabnim Ismail at ₹60 lakh, Nicola Carey and Vaishnavi Sharma at ₹30 lakh each, Sanskriti Gupta at ₹20 lakh and Rahila Firdous, an uncapped wicketkeeper, at ₹10 lakh. The club also traded for Tara Norris from UP Warriorz at her ₹10 lakh retention price after the retention list came out. She is the sixth overseas player on the roster, and the reason Mumbai cannot buy another one.

Who they released

Six players were let go. G Kamalini, who was on ₹50 lakh in 2026, is the best-known name, and she is back in the pool at a ₹40 lakh base. Saika Ishaque, whose 25 wickets are the fourth-most for the club, was on ₹30 lakh and is also in the pool. The other four were Milly Illingworth, an overseas all-rounder who will be in the pool, Kranthi Reddy, Poonam Khemnar and Triveni Vasistha.

The releases free up little. Their 2026 deals were worth about ₹1.3 crore between them, and the ₹90 lakh purse is the league's figure after these exits.

Who they may target

The squad has six open places and the maths decide the rest. After keeping ₹10 lakh back for each of the other five empty spots, Mumbai could spend at most about ₹40 lakh on any one player, so this is not a club that can chase a headline name.

CricOptics's forecast replays the whole auction 400 times, set by set, using each club's purse, places and the roles of the players it kept. Mumbai's retained group leans on four stars at the top, with Harmanpreet the only specialist batter of note and the uncapped Firdous the only wicketkeeper, so the model sends it toward Indian batting.

The names it returns most often are Tejal Hasabnis, a batter with a ₹30 lakh base, who Mumbai bid for in about four runs in ten; Amandeep Kaur, an Indian all-rounder at ₹10 lakh (a different player from Mumbai's own Amanjot Kaur); and Kiran Navgire, a batter at ₹40 lakh whom UP Warriorz released. Further down come a run of ₹10 lakh batters and bowlers. Mumbai also bid for Devika Vaidya, a bowler at ₹30 lakh whom the simulation sells in about seven runs in ten, but they are one of several clubs interested and rarely win her.

Because Mumbai are poor and the pool is deep in modest Indian players, the model expects them to fill most places at or near the base price. Two or three signings at ₹10 to ₹30 lakh would suit them, with a single larger bid of up to about ₹40 lakh.

What to watch

Mumbai's constraint is the story. They have won titles by buying the best overseas all-rounders, and this year they cannot. If the forecast is right, the interesting question is whether the Indian pool throws up one more player who can bowl and bat, and whether Mumbai get her before UP Warriorz, who have four times the money, or Delhi.

The forecast has not been backtested, because no earlier WPL auction in our data holds its pool and base prices. It cannot see which players a club actually wants, injuries or the right to match. Treat it as a description of a typical outcome, not a prediction.