WPL set alight, Harmanpreet style

"Think this is the last time we'll get tickets at these throwaway price(s) to watch the kind of stars that we got in action here."

Amod, a fresh-out-of-college techie, is new to women's cricket but hooked just enough to know the curtain raiser of the inaugural Women's Premier League fell on a Saturday and not too far from his place. The Punekar is an ardent Smriti Mandhana fan but his loyalties have always been with Mumbai Indians in the IPL.

"I'll settle for Harman [Harmanpreet Kaur, MI Women captain] too," he laughed, flaunting the self-painted MI tattoo on the side of his cheek and unfurling the flag he picked up just outside the DY Patil Stadium. The 23-year-old has dragged three of his other non-cricket watching friends to the DY Patil Stadium too, one of whom is reluctantly collecting their passes at a very crowded box office in 35 degrees of sapping heat.

"But the moment I read Mumbai got a women's team now, I just knew I had to watch and follow [the games]." The statement is immediately scoffed at by the other two members of his group, but in about a couple of hours from there, Amod would have stood vindicated.

And the validation came from none other than his new MI captain. Harmanpreet Kaur, without breakfast that July morning in Derbyshire, woke India up to women's cricket and, on very little practice this March, she lit up the competition that's a (long overdue) byproduct of it.

After kicking off with the streaky first boundary in her total tally of 14, in