Gujarat Giants gave itself plenty of work to do heading into the mega-auction for the 2026 edition of Women’s Premier League. The Ahmedabad-based franchise retained just two players, Ashleigh Gardner and Beth Mooney, heading into the competition, and was faced with rebuilding the squad from close to scratch.
It is a measure of how successful that process was that a year on, it has opted to let go of just four players (Danni Wyatt-Hodge, Titas Sadhu, Ayushi Soni, and Shivani Singh) and heads into the 2027 mini-auction with arguably the least work to do.
“I’m pretty confident with the skill sets we’ve got at the moment within our squad. In theory, we could get zero players at the auction because we’ve got our minimum of 15,” quipped head coach Michael Klinger at a media roundtable.
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“I’m confident with our starting XI at the minute and our group there. So, it’s probably going to be more sort of top-up players to add depth to the squad, especially with our local players. Potentially an overseas player could come in and give us a bit of a different mix, but it’ll be more skill sets that we just feel we need to add some depth to.”
GG ended the league phase in second last year, behind eventual champion Royal Challengers Bengaluru, before falling in the Eliminator for the second year in a row. Klinger reflected positively on the campaign, opining that his side was well-placed to make the next step beyond the Eliminator.
“We had a pretty good season to be honest. Unfortunately, we lost the Eliminator for the second year in a row, so there’s no doubt we’re trying to go another step further from that,” he said.
“But we’ve got to start from fresh and every team’s going to look pretty strong, especially their starting XI. So, I feel like we’re in a good place in terms of putting our best foot forward in this tournament. I believe we’ve got a strong squad with different combinations we can go with.”
Big seasons for Yastika and Anushka
One player who Klinger will be able to call upon this year is Yastika Bhatia, who GG picked up at the mega-auction despite knowing she would not be fit for the 2026 season. Klinger said that the call to sign the wicketkeeper-batter was a “no-brainer” despite her injury at the time.
“In my first couple of years, she was at Mumbai Indians, and she always seemed to play pretty well against us. So for me, it was a no-brainer to get her,” he said. “We felt looking long-term, especially in the two-year cycle of WPL, that given she was on target for her knee to be right sometime in the middle of this year, she would have a really good lead into the WPL.”
“She’s scored runs everywhere she’s gone, whether it’s been India or India A. She got a taste of the national team and did pretty well, then after being left out of that squad, she made runs for India A, made runs in the CPL just recently. So that’s a really good sign for us, and I hope we can do everything we can to help her get back as a permanent fixture in the Indian team.”
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Another player who impressed for the side last year was batter Anushka Sharma, who earned a call-up to the national set-up on the back of her performances, and Klinger was hopeful that her taste of national honours would push her to excel for GG.
“I thought she was fantastic last year for us in her first WPL season. She’s had a really good India A series now against Australia A, had a taste of international cricket and probably could have been there a little bit longer potentially with more opportunities,” the Australian noted. “But I’m hoping that will work in our favour, to be honest. After getting a taste of international cricket, I’m sure she’s going to be desperate to do everything she can to get back there.
Both her and Yastika are probably in the same boat playing for India A at the moment. I’m sort of hoping they’re going to have a lot of motivation to have a really good WPL to help break both of them back into that Indian starting XI lineup.”
Auction placement
Klinger also noted that the placement of the 2027 mini-auction presented franchises a new challenge given that it takes place just two days after the start of the domestic season unlike previous years.
“This year is probably a little different,” he admitted. “We’re probably not going to get the feedback on good performances from players in domestic cricket, both ours and also potential buys in the auction.”
“But we’ve held two camps just in the last six weeks. We held one about six weeks ago with all our local players and a few invited players that we’re sort of looking to scout potentially for whether it’s this auction or auctions in the future.”
He also praised the GG management for its investment in the scouting system, saying, “We’ve got our physios and Strength and Conditioning coaches here to see how everyone is travelling physically.
But we’ve also got a great scouting programme just to see what else is out there where we have people going to watch all the domestic competitions and that information getting fed back to me is extremely helpful coming into an auction.”
Published on Oct 01, 2026