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Follow UsUP Warriorz managed to retain most of their core players but made a few eye-catching decisions, one of which was to release their project player and a young leg-spinner, Parshavi Chopra.
Alongside that, the franchise also let go of the experienced Lauren Bell, who added a different dynamic to their pace-bowling unit. But in a press conference after the retention for the 2025 edition of the Women’s Premier League (WPL), UP Warriorz’ head coach, Jon Lewis, reasoned out the moves.
While keeping his cards close to his chest, the Warriorz’ head coach dropped a hint that the franchise might be looking at an all-rounder, potentially one that can fit into the middle-order and bowl a bit of pace.
Here’s what Lewis had to say about some of the decisions that the Warriorz took:
You spoke about the need to get a multi-faceted cricketer. Is there a chance to land someone like Deandra Dottin at the auction?
Lewis: Well, I think we'll keep our options really open. Not retaining Lauren Bell gives us the option to look at lots of different types of cricketers. There is a genuine concern from us as a franchise around the workload that the players will be under coming off the back of the Ashes series.
And so we need to consider that as well. And so we need to think about where people's workloads are because the players are playing a lot more cricket now than they have done in the past. So we haven't targeted any one individual at the moment, but we'll keep watching what's happening around the world in cricket—as we always do—and make our minds up closer to the auction time.
How tough was the decision to release Parshavi Chopra, one of the franchise's project players?
Yeah, that's really tough. We put a lot of hard work into all of our young Indian cricketers. As a franchise we're really trying to build the franchise from the foundations up.
We started two years ago with UP Warriorz in the WPL, and we are a new franchise—and it's still a new franchise—and it's very embryonic. So, having young cricketers who are exciting talents and having to release them is tricky. Unfortunately, Parshavi [Chopra] hasn't shown anywhere near the same form that got her into the team in WPL 1.
She struggled a little bit, but Parshavi will come back strong again. She's got the qualities. As a wrist spinner in women's cricket, she spins the ball both ways at a good pace.
So when she develops and keeps working hard at her game, she will come again to WPL. And like I said, with all the other young cricketers that we have, we're really trying to grow that core of young Indian players to be long-standing UP players for a long time to come.
A big problem for UP has been the pace department, could you just talk about what the franchise is looking at this year in that department?
We're [UP Warriorz] looking for Anjali Sarvani to come back stronger than she did last year.
She [Sarvani] came into the tournament off the back of a really tough year with a knee injury. Obviously, last year gave us a chance to give Saima Thakor an opportunity to come and open the bowling for us. She's gone from strengths to strengths, and obviously, we've seen her open the bowling for India recently.
We hope that our investment and time with those players will pay off next season. Saima is definitely improving, and Anjali, from her character, will come back stronger. But we'll also be looking around domestic and international cricket for people who can play in that space.
Saima has also made her India debut. Could you talk about how valuable she will be to the bowling department?
Yeah, well, Saima's shown some real improvement. For her to come to us last year with very little experience and play, you know, for us to give her the opportunity to play a couple of games for us and the way that she responded to that and how she came in and showed what she can do, that obviously impressed people around the Indian selection. For her to progress from that point to the point where she's opening the bowling for India in international cricket is a big jump forward.
I hope that she can come into the WPL, show the improvements she's made, and be a real asset to us. What I do know about Saima is that she's got great character and is a real fighter.
About Kiran Navgire’s form, have you kept a close eye on her performance in Australia, and where is she likely to bat this year?
I don't want to give all my secrets away in a press conference, so Kiran is incredibly powerful and really talented again. We have a lot of options to think about, and when it comes down to that time, we will decide. We are making sure that we keep all our options open.
Kiran can play at the top of the order as a finisher, and that power makes her unique. Bowlers and opponents really fear Kiran; she can take games away from anyone at any point. She has a really unique skill set in terms of power in women’s cricket.
And that's something we've got to utilise well and best we can at UP. So we'll make those decisions closer to the tournament. But I'm hopeful that Kiran continues that good form. I know she scored 100 recently in domestic cricket. We hope that form continues. We've got a group of players who are performing well domestically, who come into our franchise, and who are able to transform their domestic form into UP Warriors runs.
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