WPL 2025: RCB to host camps for player selection ahead of auction, says Rangarajan

New Delhi(The Uttam Hindu): Malolan Rangarajan, the assistant coach-cum-head scout for Royal Challengers Bengaluru, revealed that the franchise will conduct camps to identify and shortlist players ahead of the 2025 Women’s Premier League (WPL) auction, to be held next month.RCB, the defending champions, has retained Smriti Mandhana, Ellyse Perry, Richa Ghosh, Sabbineni Meghana, Shreyanka Patil, Georgia Wareham, Asha Sobhana, Renuka Singh, Sophie Devine, Sophie Molineux, Ekta Bisht, Kanika Ahuja and Kate Cross.They got Danni Wyatt-Hodge via a trade from UP Warriorz and let go of Heather Knight, Nadine de Klerk, Shubha Satheesh, Disha Kasat, Indrani Roy, Simran Bahadur and Shraddha Pokharkar.“What will happen between now and the auction is that we'll have a couple of camps for our players and I'd like to mention for the players of interest, which will help us inform creating our shortlist of players for the auction and hopefully even make it a little bit more certain as to who we need to target and who we could have as backups.”

“So, with the auction in December, the plan would be to have a camp prior to the auction and hopefully get the team we're looking for,” said Malolan in a statement issued by the franchise.Asked on the idea behind retaining their core group of players, Malolan explained, “As far as the coaching staff is concerned, I think it is very, very important for us to remember what worked for us on and off the field from last season and retaining our core values on the field and off the field that we had.”“That should not dictate our decisions but should guide our decisions. So keeping those things in mind, we came up with the set of retentions. We've also thought really hard about how we wanted to recruit in the last auction and we brought in a couple of players with experience. So that's held together and given us a good core to go forward with.”

RCB now have a purse of Rs 3.25 crore to go into the WPL auction, and have four slots to fill in to complete their squad of 18. Malolan also gave a sneak peek into how all RCB stakeholders came forward to decide on WPL retentions, especially with IPL retention talks running at the same time.“As far as the management is concerned, I think their belief in not only the retained players, just the whole process we've had through this WPL, the previous WPL. I have the good fortune of being part of both the IPL and WPL setup and what I would say is consistency with the management and going into this whole retention process.”“It was running parallelly with the IPL and they've been very, very calm. They're a group of people who understand all sides of the facets that we bring on the table and they've been very consistent and once the recommendations were given, they were able to debate and deliberate and most importantly understand where the coaching staff and the decision makers were coming in, including the captain.”