WC qualifier plays huge role for small teams: Mir

Former Pakistan captain Sana Mir feels that the upcoming ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2025 Qualifier in Pakistan will benefit teams like Bangladesh, Ireland and West Indies and welcomed the approach taken by the ICC to grow the game.

The qualifier tournament set to take place in Pakistan from April 9, featuring six teams, will finalise the remaining teams for the eight-team tournament later this year in India.

Hosts Pakistan will be joined by ICC Full Members Bangladesh, Ireland and West Indies along with Associate Members Thailand and Scotland, for the Qualifier.

“One of the great things about the ICC Women’s Championship, which I benefited from hugely in my career, is that it has been expanded to 10 teams. I feel that plays a huge role, especially for countries like Bangladesh and Ireland now that they have been part of that,” ICC quoted Sana as saying in a release.

“It is a very exciting time in women’s cricket and if we keep doing things right, there will be more than four or five teams who people want to see playing against each other.

“In the last World Cup, a lot of matches went down to the last couple of overs and that’s what you want to see as an audience. Women’s cricket is providing that,” she added.

That jeopardy is on the up at all levels, and the hope now is that fans will see plenty of it in Pakistan over the next few weeks.

Bismah Maroof, who succeeded Sana as Pakistan captain, added, “Women’s cricket has improved massively in the past few years and it’s going from strength to strength. The associate countries are playing really well, Scotland and Thailand have come a long way and as a full member country, Ireland have grown a lot.”

ICC Manager - Women’s Cricket and former India international cricketer, Snehal Pradhan, is looking forward to the event in Pakistan where six teams will compete for two spots at the Women’s Cricket World Cup in India later this year.

Pradhan believes that with the standard rising across the board, predicting who will come through qualifying is almost impossible.

“It’s very high stakes cricket in terms of what is up for grabs. The last Cricket World Cup in New Zealand was an extremely successful event. We saw just how high-profile that event is and that is the opportunity that two of the six teams are going to be fighting it out for,” she said.

“Cricket with context, huge outcomes on the line, great opportunities so it’s a brilliant tournament, everyone is excited about it. We’ve got four full members, two associate members, so this is an extremely competitive pack of six teams.

“It really is hard to pick the two teams who are going to get through. We saw Thailand make it to the T20 World Cup in 2020, so they have shown that they are able to get to the world stage, Scotland got to the T20 World Cup in 2024 so they can do it as well. No team will be taken lightly.”

Agencies