Meet the UAE cricketer hoping to earn a dream contract at the women's IPL

Esha Oza's prolific run with the bat earned her the ICC Associate Player of the Year 2022 award on Wednesday.

Now, the young UAE batter is eyeing a slice of glory at the Women's Indian Premier League (WIPL), the inaugural edition of which will start in March this year after the Indian cricket board auctioned five teams for a whopping $572 million.

The Mumbai-born cricketer, who fell in love with the game after playing street cricket with her cousins during summer vacations in India, is hoping to earn a chance to be a part of a league that is tipped to change the dynamics of women's cricket.

"What we have heard is that all (WIPL) teams can have a maximum of five overseas players playing and one of them should be an associate player. So they are chances of associate players getting picked as well in the player auction," the 24-year-old Esha, who will register for the WIPL auction through the Emirates Cricket Board, told the Khaleej Times.

"The (ICC Associate Cricketer of the Year) award has come just before the (WIPL) auction which will be apparently held at the start of February. So yeah just fingers crossed for that."

In an emotional social media post after bagging the ICC award, Esha had thanked all her teammates and coaches at various UAE academies that helped her chase the cricket dream.

"They (teammates and coaches) are happy, from the morning (Wednesday), I have been saying, 'thank you, thank you', after reading all the messages," said Esha, who helped the UAE qualify for the Asia Cup last year with a string of brilliant knocks.

"The team that we have right now is so supportive, winning this award would not have been possible without them.

"You can only perform as well as you can if you have a good team. If there are people who are backing you throughout, then you can just go out and play the way you want to play," added Esha who will be flying to Australia on January 28 to play for the Fairbreak XI against Cricket ACT in the Canberra Games.

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