At the forthcoming Women’s T20 World Cup 2024 in the United Arab Emirates, which kicks off on October 3, Pakistani women’s captain Fatima Sana has endorsed her team to play an aggressive type of cricket.
This year, at the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup, we want to take a new and daring approach.
Fatima Sana acknowledges the scrutiny of their strategy in the shortest format and says her unit would play fearlessly and with good intentions.
Written for the International Chamber of Commerce: We’ve had trouble in the powerplay in the past, losing wickets early, losing middle-order players, and scoring runs slowly enough to reach low totals. Chasing targets above 120 has also proven to be challenging for us.
We now know how important it is to post competitive scores and set the tone with positive purpose, particularly in the powerplay. The best teams, when comparing notes, all want to maximise the opening six overs in order to chase big totals and score large amounts of runs.
We’ve been playing with more of an offensive mindset lately, and several of our younger players have shown tremendous promise. Since my 2019 debut, the game has undergone significant change. Now that the scores are higher and hitters have more leeway to play, the club is adjusting to remain competitive.
Gull Feroza has played well this year and has had some impressive Asia Cup innings. In the most recent series against South Africa, Muneeba Ali, at the top of the order, also fared well. They both have tremendous expertise and are in good form.
In order to assist us produce larger totals and compete with the best, we’ve urged them to aim for a strike rate of above 100. We have skilled players in the middle order in Nida Dar, Sidra Amin, and Aliya Riaz. Through my batting, I have also been trying very hard to infuse the team with great spirit.
Over the past year, Sadia Iqbal has improved dramatically as a bowler. Nashra Sandhu is in the top 10 and she is presently placed #3 in the ICC T20 rankings. We have two excellent leg spinners:
Syeda Arooba Shah, who captained Pakistan U19 at the T20 World Cup, and Tuba Hassan, who has been a vital member of the team since her debut. Nida Dar leads the T20 league in wicket-taking.
Our powerful spin department will be essential in the Dubai conditions, since both of them bring a lot of energy to the pitch.
Diana Baig’s experience will be a fantastic advantage in the fast-bowling department. We have Tasmia Rubab, a left-arm seamer, who adds good variation, and I’ll try my hardest, as always, to contribute with the bat and the ball.
I’m eager to watch how everything works out for Pakistan because of this fascinating blend of youth and experience.
We had an excellent conditioning camp before our series against South Africa, and our performances in that series provided us a lot of momentum and confidence heading into the World Cup. We showed that our new strategy is beginning to work in the second game when we scored our highest-ever T20I total of 181 runs.
We are inspired to make up for our disappointing Asia Cup loss to Sri Lanka when we play them in the opening World Cup group stage match.
At all six of the previous T20 World Cups, Pakistan has won one match. We’ll see where it gets us this time; our goal is to win as many as we can. Even though we have a formidable group that includes the defending champions Australia, we are more confident because we have recently defeated teams like India and New Zealand.
Giving it everything you have to play against elite teams brings out the best in you. We are confident that our home fans will be rooting for us throughout this World Cup.
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We know the country is behind us since we had fantastic numbers and public interest during the South Africa series in Multan.
We hope that the T20 World Cup will be fantastic, insha’Allah.
India
