UP Warriorz (UPW) have acquired Chinelle Henry as an injury replacement for Alyssa Healy for WPL 2025 after the Australia and UPW captain was ruled out of the tournament because of a stress injury in her right foot. Meanwhile, defending champions Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) have brought in Heather Graham and Kim Garth in place of Sophie Devine and Kate Cross; Devine is taking a break from the game, while Cross hasn’t played since December owing to a back injury. All three players have been picked at INR 30 lakh.
Healy missed the T20I leg of the women’s Ashes, which Australia won 16-0 over England, and passed a late fitness test to play the series-ending Test match as a middle-order batter. She got through the match without any obvious discomfort, scoring 34 in Australia’s only innings, but said later that she would not play in the WPL and would also miss the three-match T20I series against New Zealand that starts just two days after the WPL final on March 15.
Henry, the 29-year-old West Indies middle-order batter and handy quick bowler, hasn’t played in the WPL before, but comes into the tournament with form behind her. She hit a 16-ball 43 in the last T20I on West Indies’ tour of India late last year, and followed it up with a 72-ball 61 in the third ODI of the same series. Overall, she has played 62 T20Is, scoring 473 runs in 53 innings at a strike rate of 91.13. She also has 22 wickets from 44 bowling innings.
Garth, who has turned out for Gujarat Giants (GG) in the past, was a big part of Australia’s Ashes campaign, playing all three ODIs, two T20Is and the one-off Test, picking up nine wickets overall. A 28-year-old bowling allrounder who started out with her native Ireland before moving to Australia, Garth has 49 wickets from 59 T20Is to go with 764 runs.
Graham, also 28, has been a part of the WPL in the past, with Mumbai Indians (MI), but hasn’t played a game in the tournament. And though highly rated in Australia, where she has been a part of Hobart Hurricanes and Perth Scorchers in the WBBL, she has only played one ODI and five T20Is in an international career that started in 2019. She has eight wickets in T20Is.
The third edition of the WPL will kick off on February 14 with a match between RCB and GG in Vadodara.
