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The second edition of the Women’s Premier League (WPL) gets underway on Friday, 23 February with a star-studded opening ceremony set to take place at Bengaluru’s M Chinnaswamy Stadium.
The opening ceremony will be headlined by Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan, who also happens to be a co-owner of the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) franchise in the Indian Premier League (IPL). Besides ‘King Khan’, Shahid Kapoor, Kartik Aaryan, Tiger Shroff, and Sidharth Malhotra are some of the other stars who will be performing at the opening ceremony that is scheduled to begin at 6.30 pm local time.
The opening ceremony will be followed by the opening match of the tournament, in which defending champions Mumbai Indians face Delhi Capitals in what will be a rematch of last year’s finalists. The Harmanpreet Kaur-led Mumbai had defeated Meg Lanning’s Delhi by seven wickets to be crowned inaugural WPL champions, and both teams enter the second season as strong contenders for the title.
Unlike the IPL, which has been in existence since 2008 and is a 10-team affair, the WPL has five teams where the table-topper at the end of the league stage qualifies directly for the final, where they face the winner of the Eliminator — the knock-out clash between the second and third-placed teams.
DC had qualified directly for the final after finishing at the top of the table while MI thrashed UP Warriorz, who finished third on the table, by 72 runs to enter the summit clash. Royal Challengers Bangalore and Gujarat Giants finished fourth and fifth respectively after losing six out of eight games each, the Giants finishing at the bottom due to their inferior Net Run Rate.
MI, DC and the Smriti Mandhana-led Royal Challengers Bangalore are the three IPL franchises that are also part of the WPL. The Ahmedabad and Lucknow franchises, however, have different owners in the IPL and the WPL, and are called the Gujarat Giants and UP Warriorz respectively in the women’s league.
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