Confident that Indians will keep playing in WBBL: CA CEO Hockley

Cricket Australia CEO Nick Hockley is thrilled that as many as 14 Australians will be taking part in the inaugural Women's Premier League (WPL) to be held in Mumbai next month. The first edition of WPL, with team valuation of more than Rs 4600 crore and broadcast deal upwards of Rs 950 crore, has already started grabbing eye balls.

"We are so excited to see rapid growth of women's cricket in India and to see full stadium in our last series here is absolutely fantastic and something we had been advocating in Australian cricket," Hockley, who was present at the Ferozshah Kotla during the second India versus Australia Test, told PTI during an interaction.

Ashleigh Gardner, with a Rs 3.20 crore (USD 558,000) deal with Gujarat Giants, is the highest paid Australian star in WPL.

"We are absolutely delighted to see WPL starting. It's a great parameter to see how many Australian players are playing in WPL and to have 40 per cent of the Aussie represent the overseas players in WPL, which is a great result.

"And equally in terms of T20 cricket, good number of Aussies are playing in IPL, it is great to see how we are going globally," Hockley stated during the conversation on the opening day of the second Test.

While the Indian men haven't been allowed to play in franchise based T20 leagues across the globe, top woman cricketers like Harmanpreet Kaur, Jemimah Rodrigues, Deepti Sharma, Shafali Verma and Richa Ghosh have all plied their trade in WBBL. Hockley is confident that it won't stop.

"More opportunity that we have for our female players is just absolutely brilliant. There is now an established pathway to play professional cricket for female cricketers which is so exciting," he said. "We are proud that WBBL has been a leader and standard of cricket has been exceptionally high. So we would like to see as many Indian players playing in WBBL in foreseeable future."