Women's Premier League Mega Auction 2025: Player Retention Rule Explained

It’s just been less than a week since the Indian women's team lifted their maiden World Cup trophy and the women's cricket scene is again abuzz with action.

WPL teams have just announced their retention ahead of the mega auction and the excitement regarding the auction is palpable as teams have released significant mega stars of women’s cricket who will be up for sale in the upcoming auctions.

 While the successful teams of the WPL such as Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru have tried to keep their core intact by retaining some of the key players, struggling teams such as UP and Gujarat have shed most of their players to start from scratch and form a new team.

Intricacies of Retention Slab and Players Cap

The women's retention scenario is a bit simpler than IPL retention. Each WPL team has a total purse of INR 15 crore, which they can use to form their team and they have to spend on player retention from that purse only.

According to WPL retention rules, each team can retain only a maximum of 5 players out of their existing squad of 15-18 players. Even in that 5-player limit, each team can only retain a maximum of 3 capped Indian players, a maximum of only 2 overseas players and a maximum of only 2 uncapped Indian players. Also, if a team is retaining the maximum limit of 5 players, then there has to be at least 1 uncapped Indian in it.

Now, let’s understand the slab structure of WPL retentions. There are 5 slabs under which players can be retained and WPL has listed guidelines and prices for each slab, which are as follows:

Slab 1: Price- 3.50 crore

Slab 2: Price- 2.50 crore

Slab 3: Price- 1.75 crore

Slab 4: Price- 1.00 crore

Slab 5: Price- 50 lakhs

For example, If any team decided to retain 5 players, then a total of 9.25 crore would be deducted from their original purse of 15 crore. The amount paid by the franchise to the 5 players might be different to the slab amount, but the total amount deducted from the franchise’s purse would be 9.25 crore.

The slab amount is a guidelineand the franchise can pay a different amount to the players within their original purse limit. However, if the actual amount paid by the franchise to the player is higher than the slab, the additional amount will be deducted from the remaining purse. The minimum retention price for an uncapped Indian player has to be a minimum of 50 lakhs

RTM Availability

Each franchise will have 5 RTMs which will be deducted on the basis of the players retained by them. 1 RTM will be deducted for every player retained by a franchise. If a franchise has retained 1 player then they’ll have 4 RTMs going into the auctions whereas the one retaining 5 won’t have any.