The Girls’s Premier League (WPL) public sale in New Delhi on Thursday opened up with a crackle and rapidly changed into a blaze as Asha Sobhana grew to become the primary Malayali cricketer to breach the Rs 1-crore mark. In a pulsating, seesawing bidding battle, the UP Warriorz snapped up the 34-year-old leg-spinner from Thiruvananthapuram for a staggering Rs 1.1 crore, capping some of the dramatic tussles of the night.The motion started innocuously, after the Delhi Capitals kicked issues off on the base worth of Rs 30 lakh. However the tempo surged swiftly as Delhi and UP Warriorz traded bids as much as Rs 55 lakh.

Delhi bowed out, just for the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) — Asha’s former dwelling franchise — to storm in at Rs 60 lakh, decided to reclaim the leggie who had helped energy by way of their title cost within the 2024 season.However the Warriorz refused to blink. The bids climbed into uncharted territory, and when the hammer lastly got here down at Rs 1.1 crore, UP Warriorz had clinched some of the compelling tales from Kerala on the public sale.For Asha, the second was surreal.“I used to be watching the public sale at my dwelling in Thiruvananthapuram, glued to the tv,” she tells TOI. “I received nervous throughout the bidding battle…very pleased with the outcome.”The milestone is a pure fruits for the participant constructed on persistence and doggedness.RCB had first signed Asha within the inaugural 2023 WPL season for simply Rs 10 lakh — a modest sum for the bowler who went on to assert 12 wickets and end joint second-highest wicket-taker. Her unforgettable five-wicket haul towards the UP Warriorz stays one of many defining spells of that yr. By the way, she is the one Indian to assert a five-for within the WPL.“It was towards the Warriorz two seasons again that I bagged my first five-for in WPL, and now to play for them is unimaginable. Too many issues taking place in the intervening time,” she chuckles.The RCB contract got here to her on the proper time as she was toying with the thought of quitting the sport due to the dearth of recognition after toiling away in home cricket for over a decade.A die-hard fan of former Australian legspinner Stuart MacGill, Asha’s WPL heroics earned her a long-awaited India call-up in April final yr for the Bangladesh tour, adopted by her T20I debut in Might.In October, she ticked off one other dream, when she made her ICC T20 World Cup debut in Dubai, and began in India’s opener towards New Zealand.However the journey has hardly been linear. A knee harm compelled her out of the final WPL season and sidelined her for almost a yr.Removed from dimming her spark, the layoff appeared solely to sharpen her resolve. On her return to home cricket for Kerala, she struck instantly, delivering a Participant-of-the-Match efficiency within the Senior Girls’s T20 Trophy sport towards Vidarbha final month.Her profession has been as itinerant because it has been inspirational: stints with the Railways, Kerala, Pondicherry, after which again to Kerala, all whereas juggling her employment with the South Central Railways in Hyderabad.With the WPL starting in January subsequent yr, Asha stands on the cusp of a luminous chapter — proof that perseverance, persistence, and craft can script a heartwarming story in Kerala cricket.