UP Warriorz at the WPL 2027 auction: ₹3.75 crore, eight places and one all-rounder

UP Warriorz are the club everyone in the room will be watching on 28 October. They have ₹3.75 crore, against ₹4.4 crore for the other four clubs put together, and eight places to fill, three of them overseas. Every other club is working with around a crore. If the auction has a big spender, it is UP.

This piece covers the club's record, who it kept and who it released, and which players CricOptics's forecast thinks it will go after. The history and the lists come from match results and the league's figures. The last section is a simulation, marked as one.

A short history: strong names, hard seasons

UP Warriorz were sold in the 2023 rights auction to Capri Global, and they opened with a player they have never let go. Deepti Sharma cost ₹2.6 crore at the first auction, the club's biggest buy, and she has since scored 638 WPL runs and taken 34 wickets for them. Grace Harris is second in the run charts with 581, Kiran Navgire third with 435 and Alyssa Healy fourth with 428. Sophie Ecclestone has taken 43 wickets, the most for the club.

The results have not matched the names. In 2023 UP finished third with four wins and four defeats and played the eliminator, which they lost to Mumbai by 72 runs, the biggest margin of any WPL knockout so far. In 2024 they won three and lost five, finishing fourth. In 2025 they won two, lost five and had one no-result, which left them last. In 2026 they won two and lost six, last again.

That is three seasons in a row in the bottom two, and the one season of knockout cricket came in the first year.

Who they retained

The league lists 10 players held by UP Warriorz, for ₹11.25 crore. That is the smallest retention bill in the league by about ₹2.5 crore, and it leaves ₹3.75 crore, the largest purse by a wide margin. Three of the ten are overseas.

The top of the list is Deepti Sharma at ₹3.2 crore, Shikha Pandey at ₹2.4 crore and Meg Lanning at ₹1.9 crore, together ₹7.5 crore, 67 per cent of the bill. After them are Phoebe Litchfield at ₹1.2 crore, Sophie Ecclestone at ₹85 lakh, and Harleen Deol, Kranti Gaud and Pratika Rawal at ₹50 lakh each, with Shipra Giri and Simran Shaikh at ₹10 lakh each.

Two of those prices tell the story of the 2026 reset. Ecclestone, the club's best bowler, was on ₹1.8 crore in the earlier seasons and is retained at ₹85 lakh. Simran Shaikh, bought for ₹1.9 crore in 2025, is on ₹10 lakh.

The mix by role is lopsided. Among the players whose roles we hold there is one all-rounder (Deepti), three bowlers (Pandey, Ecclestone and Gaud) and five batters and one wicketkeeper, the uncapped Shipra Giri. Tara Norris, the overseas bowler, was traded to Mumbai for her ₹10 lakh retention price after the list came out.

Who they released

Nine players left, the most of any club. The best known is Deandra Dottin, on ₹80 lakh in 2026, who does not appear in the pool list we hold. Kiran Navgire, the club's third-highest scorer, was on ₹60 lakh and is back in the pool, and so are Shweta Sehrawat (₹50 lakh), Chloe Tryon (₹30 lakh), Charli Knott, Asha Sobhana, Gongadi Trisha and Suman Meena. Amy Jones, the England wicketkeeper, was also released and is not in the pool list we hold.

With Jones gone, Shipra Giri is the only wicketkeeper on the books, so cover there is thin. The bigger gap by numbers is all-rounders: Deepti Sharma is the only one.

Who they may target

UP's position is unusual. After keeping ₹10 lakh back for each of the other seven empty places, they could spend about ₹3.05 crore on a single player. No other club can go past about ₹1.05 crore. They are also the only club with three overseas places left.

CricOptics replays the whole auction 400 times, using each club's purse, open places and the roles it kept. For UP Warriorz the output is the clearest of any club.

Grace Harris, a former UP player now released by Bengaluru, is the name the model gives to UP almost every time: they buy her in 96 per cent of runs, for a typical price of about ₹1.15 crore. After her come Sophie Molineux, an all-rounder with a ₹50 lakh base, bought in about two runs in three at around ₹75 lakh, and Sophia Dunkley, a batter at ₹50 lakh, bought in about half the runs at around ₹80 lakh. Orla Prendergast, an all-rounder at ₹30 lakh, and Chamari Athapaththu, another all-rounder at ₹30 lakh, follow. That is three overseas places and four strong candidates.

For the Indian places the model points at the all-rounder gap. Amandeep Kaur, an all-rounder at ₹10 lakh, and Devika Vaidya, a bowler at ₹30 lakh, are the Indian names UP most often bid for. UP are also the likeliest buyers of the keepers Nuzhat Parween and Sushma Verma, both on ₹30 lakh bases, but only in about one run in six or fewer.

The model also puts the money to work. Harris, Molineux and Dunkley together would come to about ₹2.7 crore at the typical prices, which leaves about ₹1 crore for five Indian places.

What to watch

The auction will turn on how UP spend. They can buy any overseas player in the pool, which means the other four clubs are bidding for what UP leave. If they go for the big overseas all-rounders first, what is left for the Indian places is a lean ₹1 crore or so, and that is where the season could be decided.

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, injuries or the right to match. It describes a typical outcome and should be read that way.