While there were already several other women’s T20 leagues across the world and the Women’s Premier League (WPL) took a while to come about, it’s today one of the biggest most anticipated women’s franchise tournaments on the calendar. Beginning in 2023, there’s no long history behind the tournament but it still attracts the highest quality cricketers from across the world.
Every year, there is an award given away for the leading wicket-taker called the WPL Purple Cap Award, and this was won by Hayley Matthews in the WPL 2023 inaugural edition of the tournament. On this page on Read Scoops, we’re going to deep dive into the leading WPL wicket-takers and you can keep reading for our complete WPL most wickets list…
Women’s Premier League most wickets list
Matthews tied with Sophie Ecclestone in the first season as the leading wicket-taker, but Matthews won the Purple Cap because of a better bowling average. See below for our top 10 WPL leading wicket-takers list, last updated on 24th Feb 2024, during the start of the WPL 2024 season by when MI Women’s Amelia Kerr had taken to the top of the list:
| Bowler | Career span | Wickets (Matches) | 4-fers/5-fers | Best spell |
| Amelia Kerr | 2023-2024 | 17 (11) | – / – | 3/22 |
| Sophie Ecclestone | 2023-2024 | 17 (10) | 1 / – | 4/13 |
| Hayley Matthews | 2023-2024 | 16 (11) | – / – | 3/5 |
| Issy Wong | 2023 | 15 (10) | 1 / – | 4/15 |
| Saika Ishaque | 2023-2024 | 15 (11) | 1 / – | 4/11 |
| Nat Sciver-Brunt | 2023-2024 | 12 (11) | – / – | 3/21 |
| Kim Garth | 2023 | 11 (7) | – / 1 | 5/36 |
| Shikha Pandey | 2023-2024 | 11 (10) | – / – | 3/23 |
| Sobhana Asha | 2023-2024 | 10 (6) | 0 / 1 | 5/22 |
| Marizanne Kapp | 2023-2024 | 10 (10) | – / 1 | 5/15 |
Because there haven’t been too many Indian T20 leagues for women over the years, there’s not a lot of depth in the local cricketing talent. Hence, most of the top spots are occupied by overseas players and the leading Indian wicket-taker in WPL history so far being Saika Ishaque, who also represents Mumbai Indians Women.
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In fact, Ishaque, Sobhana Asha, and Shikha Pandey are the only Indians in the overall WPL highest wicket-takers list. In terms of 4-fers, Ecclestone, Wong, and Ishaque all have one each, while Kim Garth, Asha, and Marizanne Kapp are those on this list to have a 5-fer each in WPL matches. At 13.93 runs per wicket, Matthews has the lowest bowling average from everyone on this WPL most wickets list.
While most of these records are from performances in WPL 2023, it was uncapped bowler Sobhana Asha from RCB Women who picked 5/22 in her first game of the WPL 2024 season, breaking into the top 10 highest wicket-takers in WPL history. In fact, she’s played the least games from players on this list, bagging 10 wickets in only 6 WPL games so far.
Hayley Matthews won the Purple Cap for her brilliant bowling display in WPL 2023 #CricketTwitter #DCvsMI #WPL pic.twitter.com/6Zf3i5KIPV
— Sportskeeda (@Sportskeeda) March 26, 2023
Those who narrowly missed the top 10 of the WPL most wickets list include Ashleigh Gardner (10 wickets), Deepti Sharma (10 wickets), Jess Jonassen (9 wickets), and Rajeshwari Gayakwad (9 wickets); but they could rise up the ranks in games to come. For more updates on WPL 2024 and on other cricket news from around the world, stay tuned to ReadScoops.com…
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