The Women’s Premier League (WPL) auction in New Delhi on Thursday opened up with a crackle and quickly turned into a blaze as Asha Sobhana became the first Malayali cricketer to breach the Rs 1-crore mark. In a pulsating, seesawing bidding war, the UP Warriorz snapped up the 34-year-old leg-spinner from Thiruvananthapuram for a staggering Rs 1.1 crore, capping one of the most dramatic tussles of the evening.The action began innocuously, after the Delhi Capitals kicked things off at the base price of Rs 30 lakh. But the tempo surged swiftly as Delhi and UP Warriorz traded bids up to Rs 55 lakh.
Delhi bowed out, only for the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) — Asha’s former home franchise — to storm in at Rs 60 lakh, determined to reclaim the leggie who had helped power through their title charge in the 2024 season.But the Warriorz refused to blink. The bids climbed into uncharted territory, and when the hammer finally came down at Rs 1.1 crore, UP Warriorz had clinched one of the most compelling stories from Kerala at the auction.For Asha, the moment was surreal.“I was watching the auction at my home in Thiruvananthapuram, glued to the television,” she tells TOI. “I got nervous during the bidding war…very happy with the result.”The milestone is a natural culmination for the player built on persistence and doggedness.RCB had first signed Asha in the inaugural 2023 WPL season for just Rs 10 lakh — a modest sum for the bowler who went on to claim 12 wickets and finish joint second-highest wicket-taker. Her unforgettable five-wicket haul against the UP Warriorz remains one of the defining spells of that year. Incidentally, she is the only Indian to claim a five-for in the WPL.“It was against the Warriorz two seasons back that I bagged my first five-for in WPL, and now to play for them is incredible. Too many things happening at the moment,” she chuckles.The RCB contract came to her at the right time as she was toying with the idea of quitting the game because of the lack of recognition after toiling away in domestic cricket for over a decade.A die-hard fan of former Australian legspinner Stuart MacGill, Asha’s WPL heroics earned her a long-awaited India call-up in April last year for the Bangladesh tour, followed by her T20I debut in May.In October, she ticked off another dream, when she made her ICC T20 World Cup debut in Dubai, and started in India’s opener against New Zealand.But the journey has hardly been linear. A knee injury forced her out of the last WPL season and sidelined her for nearly a year.Far from dimming her spark, the layoff seemed only to sharpen her resolve. On her return to domestic cricket for Kerala, she struck immediately, delivering a Player-of-the-Match performance in the Senior Women’s T20 Trophy game against Vidarbha last month.Her career has been as itinerant as it has been inspirational: stints with the Railways, Kerala, Pondicherry, and then back to Kerala, all while juggling her employment with the South Central Railways in Hyderabad.With the WPL beginning in January next year, Asha stands on the cusp of a luminous chapter — proof that perseverance, patience, and craft can script a heartwarming tale in Kerala cricket.
