England trounce Ireland at T20 World Cup after WPL auction delivers riches

Monday 13 February 2023 will go down as a momentous day in the history of women’s cricket – the day that the inaugural Women’s Premier League auction sprinkled a fairy dust of riches on female cricketers, the like of which has never been seen before.

Three and a half hours before England took to the field against Ireland in their World Cup head-to-head, eventually chasing down the target of 106 for their second win of the tournament, three England players had already been picked up in the opening round of the auction – Sophia Dunkley for £60,000 and Sophie Ecclestone for £180,000 while Nat Sciver-Brunt’s worth was finalised at a staggering £320,000 – the joint-highest (with Australia’s Ash Gardner) of any non-Indian player. In all seven England players picked up deals with the five franchises.

Given that central contracts for England Women are still worth a maximum of around £60,000, and that before Monday the best-paid franchise league in the world was The Hundred, which caps women’s salaries at £31,250, these are incredible sums. Sciver-Brunt will almost certainly be the best-paid female team athlete in the UK this year.

Might all this have proved a distraction from England’s World Cup campaign? If it had been a risk pre-game – Sciver-Brunt admitted on Saturday that it was a “strange time to be together as a group” – once play got under way, she and her teammates seemed, initially, largely unaffected. Ecclestone went about her business as usual, finishing with three for 19, including a double wicket-maiden, and taking an impressive diving catch at mid-off to see off Ireland’s Louise Little.

Meanwhile an hour after bagging herself a £75,000 deal in round two of the auction, Alice Capsey was out in the middle smashing