Smriti Mandhana to skip WBBL for second year in a row, to focus on domestic season

India women’s team vice-captain Smriti Mandhana’s will skip the Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL) for the second year in a row as she has not put forward her name for the inaugural player draft, scheduled for September 3. Almost all the top India players, including captain Harmanpreet Kaur, young Harleen Kaur, Jemimah Rodrigues and Deepti Sharma figure in the list of over 122 overseas players who have put their names forward for the draft. A total of 18 Indian players are in the list of which Harmanpreet (Melbourne Renegades) and Jemimah (Melbourne Stars) are eligible for retention. Mandhana, who had opted out of WBBL last year as well, reportedly wants to concentrate on the upcoming domestic season and also manage her workload with a busy international year ahead. A report in ESPNcricinfo said Mandhana might opt to play for Maharashtra in the domestic season which will run from October 19 to January 26 next year, and overlap with the WBBL. The WBBL will commence on October 19 and run until December 2. Mandhana’s first assignment for the country will be the Hangzhou Asian Games, scheduled to commence on September 23. With 35 players in the draft pool, England are leading the list of overseas players in the draft pool, followed by South Africa, which has 20, including their charismatic opener Laura Wolvaardt, Lizelle Lee and Shabnim Ismail. India players in the WBBL draft: Yastika Bhatia, Harmanpreet Kaur (Melbourne Renegades), Harleen Deol, Hurley Gala, Richa Ghosh, Mannat Kashyap, Amanjot Kaur, Veda Krishnamurthy, Shikha Pandey, Shreyanka Patil, Sneh Rana, Jemimah Rodrigues (Melbourne Stars), Meghana Sabbineni, Deepti Sharma, Meghna Singh, Renuka Thakur, Pooja Vastrakar, Radha Yadav.