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“Our girls are ready for the Cricket World Cup Qualifying round whenever and wherever it is going to be played,” this determination was expressed by Secretary of the Pakistan Cricket Board (Women Wing) Shamsa Hashmi, while talking to ‘The News on Sunday’ (TNS) last week at her office after the postponement of the event.

Earlier, Lahore, the capital of Pakistan’s biggest province Punjab, was to host the historic women’s cricket event from November 19-25, 2007. But the ICC management and ICC Women’s committee, after assessing the security situation in Pakistan following the imposition of emergency, postponed the tournament.

As many as eight international teams — South Africa, Bermuda, Netherlands, Papua New Guinea (Pool A), Pakistan, Scotland, Ireland and Zimbabwe (Pool B) — would be taking part in the event. The two top-ranked teams from each pool will qualify for the World Cup that is scheduled to be played in Australia in 2009.

The top eight teams in the World Cup will also qualify for the ICC World Twenty20 World Cup to be held in England later that year, where the tournament will be held alongside the men’s event. It is to be noted here that women teams from Australia, England, New Zealand, India, West Indies and Sri Lanka have already qualified for the elite World Cup event.

Pakistan’s 14-member women squad has already been announced for the World Cup qualifiers. All-rounder Urooj Mumtaz Khan will captain the side while Sajida Shah would be her deputy. Four reserves have also been named.

Shamsa, who is regarded as one of the leading female cricketers of the country, was quite confident about the hosting of grand women event, saying “Insha-Allah we would be able to hold the event in the near future”. It is to be noted here that Pakistan have never hosted such a big women’s international cricket event nor our female team featured in it before.

She informed that if Pakistan managed to get back the event, as many as 20 matches of the World Cup qualifying round will be played at four venues of the city — Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore Gymkhana, Aitchison College and LCCA cricket ground. “The warm-up games of the event would be held at Government College and Muridke Club cricket grounds,” she added.

To a question regarding the preparation of national women team, Shamsa said that the best possible efforts have been put in to prepare our girls for the mega event. “We arranged matches against male teams of Shafqat Rana Academy and Aitchison College to give our girls the toughest possible circumstances to prepare themselves. Our girls defeated Shafqat Rana Academy twice and that is enough to gauge our planning and standard of our preparation as well,” she elaborated.

“We are expecting quite encouraging results in the eight-nation event,” she expressed her hope. “We imparted special training to our girls under three-phase formula. Firstly we emphasised on physical evaluation and mental strength. Then we arranged a five-week camp at Abbottabad’s high altitude environment for cardio-vascular fitness of our players. We also focused on the fielding department and individual behaviour there. And lastly, we tried to raise the level of ability of our girls to counter a quality opposition by holding matches against boys,” she explained.

Replying to a query regarding umpires, Shamsa said it would be the first time in national cricket history that two Pakistani women umpires — Kausar Shah and Aafia Amin — will be supervising an international cricket event.

Captain Urooj Mumtaz, who was undergoing a training session at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) ground along with her teammates, while expressing her views said, “We are quite confident of a good performance in the tournament.”

Urooj, who hammered an unbeaten 101 not out against Hong Kong last year, said that they were working on improving footwork, and batting with more aggression and confidence. “We are working hard on our consistency which is the key to success.”

It is pertinent to mention here that under Urooj, Pakistan thrashed Hong Kong 3-0 last year at Lahore and resultantly won the right to play in the World Cup Qualifying round for the first time. Urooj, who grabbed two five-wicket hauls against South Africa and West Indies, said “Our fielding has really improved over the last couple of months due to hard efforts of our coaches.”

When asked to disclose her most dependable players, Urooj said “Qanita Jalil, Asmavia Iqbal, Sajida Shah and Sana Javed are my main players and they can play match-winning roles against any established side of the world.”

Answering another question, Urooj, who has a sharp cricketing brain, said Ireland, Holland and South African women teams are playing international cricket for the last many years but even then we do have the potential to win a berth in the World Cup 2009.

“We bowled out boys of the Shafqat Rana Academy for 135 and 160 in two games and then chased the targets in 30-35 overs and that is enough to assess our batting and bowling abilities,” she asserted.

Umar Rasheed, the coach of the Pakistan Women’s team, while talking to TNS said “We know that the competition will be tough in the event, so we emphasised more on physical fitness, conditioning and accuracy in bowling during our preparations.”

Umar, whose six brothers — Haroon Rasheed (the Test cricketer), Tahir, Farooq, Ahmed, Mahmood and Mohtashim Rasheed — have played first-class cricket, said the tours to India and South Africa during the last one year played an important role in transforming our team into a good unit.

When asked to tell about home advantage, Umar said that definitely our girls would feel comfortable while playing on their home grounds. But according to the latest situation we may have to play qualifying rounds somewhere else but his side was ready for any type of challenges.

“We do have necessary ingredients in our squad to make it to the final of the event in any country and on any kind of surfaces.”

Former Pakistan captain Imtiaz Ahmed, who was also present on this occasion, said in women’s cricket, a few girls left the scene every year due to their marriages, engagements and other such reasons. Imtiaz, who served Pakistan Air Force (PAF) for 27 years and Royal Saudi Air Force for three years, said that we don’t feel any difficulty in finding the suitable replacements for retired cricketers due to sufficient talent in the country.

“Annual U-17 tournaments and camps in different parts of the country played an important role in finding required replacements,” said Imtiaz, who is working as a senior consultant of the PCB women’s Wing.

Pakistan squad: Urooj Mumtaz Khan (captain), Sajida Shah, Bismah Maroof, Sana Javed, Nain Abidi, Taskeen Qadeer, Sana Mir, Batool Fatima (wk), Asmavia Iqbal, Qanita Jalil, Sadia Yousuf, Sabahat Rasheed, Sumaiya Siddiqui, Naila Nazir. Reserves: Almas Akram, Arman Khan, Javeria Khan, Sabeen Abdul Samad.