One of the strongest teams on paper, UP Warriorz will be a team to watch out for in the upcoming Women’s Premier League (WPL) 2023. They kick-start their campaign on 5th March 2023 against the Gujarat Giants and the match will be played at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai.
UP Warriorz have named Alyssa Healy as their skipper ahead of Deepti Sharma and that has raised a few eyebrows of fans and cricket lovers. Several people expected that Sharma would be named as the captain as she hails from Agra, Uttar Pradesh.
The UP Warriorz have named a good coaching panel that includes the likes of Jon Lewis, Lisa Sthalekar and Anju Jain.
In this article, we plot a SWOT analysis of the UP Warriorz team in the upcoming WPL 2023:
Strength
One of the strengths of UP Warriorz will be the killer-instinct of the team. UP Warriorz will be led by an Australian and we know that Australians know how to win. They have won the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup on 6 occasions; they are reigning ICC Women’s ODI World Cup and Commonwealth Games champions too.
It remains to be seen as to how Healy integrates the killer-instinct into the UP Warriorz team.
Weakness
UP Warriorz do not have reliable and solid batters in their team except Alyssa Healy. Naturally, there might be a lot of pressure on the Australian batter.
The team will have to depend on all-rounders to do the talking with the willow and hope that their Australian skipper lives up to her expectations in terms of her batting prowess.
Opportunities
Two youngsters to keep your eyes on will be S Yashasri and Simran Shaikh. With so many international stars in the team of UP Warriorz, the youngsters can learn a lot and eventually integrate the learnings onto their domestic and national team performances.
Threat
Chasing big and imposing totals could be a major problem for UP Warriorz. The team in those situations, would be heavily reliant on their skipper Alyssa Healy and that is not healthy for the proper balance of a team.
Squad
Shweta Sehrawat, Kiran Navgire, Simran Shaikh, Sophie Ecclestone, Deepti Sharma, Tahlia McGrath, Parshavi Chopra, S Yashasri, Grace Harris, Devika Vaidya, Alyssa Healy, Laxmi Yadav, Shabnim Ismail, Anjali Sarvani, Rajeshwari Gayakwad, Lauren Bell
Predicted Playing XI
Alyssa Healy, Shweta Sehrawat, Deepti Sharma, Tahlia McGrath, Devika Vaidya Simran Shaikh, Kiran Navgire, Sophie Ecclestone, Anjali Sarvani, Shabnim Ismail, Rajeshwari Gaikwad