The second season of the WPL is over, and the second season was better than the first, and the better is the better that the league needed, and the league needed it because the first season was the season of the experiment and the second season was the season of the proof, and the proof is the thing that leagues live and die on.
The Numbers That Matter
The average attendance was twelve thousand, up from seven thousand in the first season. The average attendance is the number that the league will lead with, and the number is a good number, and the number is the number that tells you the league is, in the cities it is played in, a thing that people go to. The number that matters more is the number of Indian players who scored a fifty in the season, which was nineteen, against nine in the first season. The number of Indian players who took three or more wickets in a match was eleven, against five in the first season. The number of Indian players who were player of the match was fourteen, against eight in the first season.
These are the numbers that tell you the league is doing the thing it was set up to do, which is the thing that the BCCI said, in the launch, that the league was for, and the thing that the BCCI said the league was for was the thing that the women’s game in India has needed for twenty years, which is the thing of giving Indian players the chance to play, week in and week out, against the best players in the world, and the chance to fail, and the chance to learn from the failing, and the chance to come back the next season and not fail in the same way.
The Players Who Proved It
The player who proved it was a sixteen-year-old from Jharkhand, who opened the batting in the final, and who made forty-three off thirty-one balls, and who was, in the final, the player who gave the chase the start it needed, and who was, in the season, the player who scored two fifties and who was, in the season, the player who the selectors have, since the final, been talking about, and who the selectors will, in all likelihood, pick for the World Cup, and who will, if she is picked, be the youngest player in the squad, and who will, if she plays, be the player who the WPL has found, and who the WPL has found because the WPL gave her the chance, and the chance is the thing that the WPL was for.
The other player who proved it was a twenty-four-year-old fast bowler from Vidarbha, who took sixteen wickets in the season, and who was, in the season, the leading wicket-taker among Indian players, and who bowled, in the final, the penultimate over, and who defended thirteen runs off it, and who did it with the yorker that the overseas players have been bowling in this league and that the Indian players have, in the first season, not bowled, and that the Indian players have, in the second season, bowled, because the overseas players have been in the same dressing room, and the same dressing room is the thing that the league was for, and the same dressing room is the thing that the second season proved was working.
What The Third Season Has To Do
The third season has to do two things. The first is to keep the attendance growing, and the growing is the thing that the league has to do in the cities it is in, and the cities it is in are the cities that have the crowds, and the crowds are the crowds that have come, and the crowds that have come are the crowds that will come back if the cricket is good, and the cricket was good, and the cricket will be good, and the cricket will be good because the Indian players are getting better, and the Indian players are getting better because the league is giving them the chance.
The second thing the third season has to do is to go to more cities. The league was played in two cities in the first season and in three in the second, and the three was the three that the BCCI chose, and the three was the three that the BCCI chose because the three were the cities that had the grounds and the crowds and the hotels, and the three were the three that the BCCI knew it could do. The third season has to go to four or five, and the four or five has to include a city that is not Mumbai or Bengaluru or Delhi, and the city that is not Mumbai or Bengaluru or Delhi is the city that the women’s game has to reach, and the reaching is the thing that the league, in the end, was for.