Wake up call for women’s cricket team

Sports Reporter

LADY Chevrons coach Adam Chifo has described the recent series against Thailand as a wake-up call for the senior women’s national cricket team ahead of two limited-overs ICC World Cup qualifiers.

Zimbabwe will participate in the 2021 ICC Women’s T20 World Cup Africa qualifier set for Botswana starting this weekend, before they host the ICC 2022 World Cup ODI qualifiers in November.

Having spent almost six months on the sidelines, Chifo believes the recently concluded friendly series against Thailand, in which the Lady Chevrons drew 2-2 with the Asians in the T20I before losing 2-1 in the ODI series, was a wake-up call for his side.

“We don’t have enough time left; we have lots of ground to be covered in all departments and that work needs to be done now. So we will cover as much as we can with the little time that is left and we are sure by the time the qualifiers start, we would have covered considerable ground,” he said.

Despite his charges finding themselves on the losing end of the limited-overs series, Chifo described the matches as an eye-opener.

The Lady Chevrons are confident of securing qualification for limited-overs T20 and the ODI World Cup scheduled for 2022 and 2023 respectively.

“The Thailand series was good preparation for us in both the ODI and T20 matches. The ODIs obviously gave us an indication of where we are regarding our preparations for the qualifiers in November, while the T20 series helped us a lot in preparation for the Africa T20 qualifiers coming up in Botswana in a week’s (this week) time,” said Chisvo.

The Lady Chevrons are one of 11 teams who will battle for a ticket to the 2023 finals in South Africa.

Cameroon, Namibia, Nigeria, Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Botswana make up the rest of the African teams.

According to the ICC website, the five regions will host a regional qualifying event, with the top team from each region joining the bottom two ranked teams in the women’s T20I rankings as of November 30, 2021.

The bottom two ranked teams from the women’s T20I competed at the Australia 2020 event.

The final position will be filled by the highest ranked team in the regional qualifiers on the November cut-off date.

ICC also indicated that the world cricket body’s board has approved a detailed Covid-19 contingency plan for the competitions.