The first-ever auction for The Hundred Women's competition just wrapped up, and it has left everyone scratching their heads. The ECB doubled the team salary cap to £880,000, which is pretty generous on paper.
But switching from a draft to an auction really changed the game. Suddenly, there's this huge gap in how teams value performance.
Take Deepti Sharma. She's not just any player; she led London Spirit to the 2024 title and picked up the World Cup Player of the Tournament award in 2025. You'd think she'd be a top pick, right? Instead, Sunrisers Leeds grabbed her for just £27,500, which is basically the starting price.
Meanwhile, the auction drove some bids past £210,000 for other players, even as proven match winners like Deepti barely got noticed. The idea was to let market demand set the prices, but in practice, it's exposed some real quirks in how teams decide who's worth what.
The Widening Pay Gap In The Auction Era
Switching to an auction system was supposed to make The Hundred more like the IPL and WPL, but it's ended up turning things into a "winner takes all" situation. Sure, you've got stars like Sophie Devine and Beth Mooney landing huge contracts of £210,000 each, which is massive, but now the pay gap between the top earners and steady performers like Deepti Sharma is even wider.
Take Richa Ghosh, too. She's a World Cup standout, yet Manchester Super Giants picked her up for just £50,000. So, even with a bigger salary pool, the new setup isn't really sharing the wealth with players who keep delivering on the big stage.
Shocking Exclusions Of India's World Cup Winning Stars
The most surprising aspect of the 2026 auction was that a number of Indian superstars didn't get any bids. The team of this season comprises the World Cup-winning squad members who were thought to be very expensive candidates for the franchises. Opening prodigy Shafali Verma, who is known for her powerplay batting, got no offer. At the same time, left-arm spinner Radha Yadav, medium-fast bowler Arundhati Reddy, and talented youngster Sree Charani were still unsold.
Their omission certainly prompts the serious question of whether the auction really reflected the teams' priorities and if the teams might simply be looking for players who can perform well in English conditions rather than those who already have proven international success and championship experience.