UAE women to host Hong Kong in four-match Twenty20 series

TWITTER UAE WOMEN CRICKET-1650468597230 — The UAE women's team members, who have qualified for the ICC Twenty20 World Cup Image Credit: ECB Twitter

Dubai: The UAE women’s team will play a four-match Twenty20 international bilateral series against Hong Kong at the Malek Ground in Ajman from April 27-30.

Emirates Cricket Board and Cricket Hong Kong and Pacific Star Sports, announced the details of the SkyExchange.net Women’s T20 international Bilateral Series. The series’ first three matches will commence at 7pm with the fourth and final match to start at 9am (UAE time).

Mubashshir Usmani, General Secretary Emirates Cricket Board, said: “Such opportunities are vital to our women’s development. We are extremely proud that our women continue to be highly competitive in regional and Associate Member events, evident through their qualifying for the ICC T20 World Cup Global Qualifiers (for a second time), and their three-time victory in the GCC Women’s T20 Championships. T20 is undoubtably our strongest format and, as we eye the recent ICC approval for Associate Members to be awarded ODI-status, these tournaments provide an exceptional pathway in developing our skill-set and match-playing acumen to longer formats. We extend our thanks to Cricket Hong Kong and Pacific Star Sports for their support and vision for the future of women’s sport and women’s cricket.”

Great opportunity

Mark Farmer, General Manager (High Performance) of Cricket Hong Kong said: “This series provides a great opportunity for our women’s team to continue the momentum they gained from the World Cup Qualifiers late last year. A series like this provides a great platform for individuals and the team to develop and gain invaluable international match experience. We would like to thank the Emirates Cricket Board for hosting us in what we hope will become a regular series on the annual calendar.”

Parvez Khan, CEO of Pacific Star Sports, said: “With some incredible talent and growing interest in the sports; we felt compulsion to showcase these competitive women’s matches on larger platforms. Our objective is to stream women’s matches on one of global largest cricket platform of CricTracker and Fancode.”

Boost our confidence

Chaya Mughal, UAE captain, said: “Before heading to our (ICC Women’s T20) Global qualifiers, the forthcoming bilateral series with Hong Kong is a great opportunity for us to try out different batting and bowling combinations. Participating in this series will not only boost our confidence, but it will also assist us in developing a good mindset and game plan that we have been working on for several months. The team is super excited to play and perform, and we want to participate in many more similar events in the near future.”

Kary Chan, Hong Kong’s captain said; “We are incredibly excited to return to the Dubai to take on UAE. We entered last year’s World Cup Qualifiers having not played international cricket for over two years and won four of our five games. Regular international series between major tournaments is a critical to ensuring we get invaluable match experience. That match experience will enable us to learn, develop and enter tournaments with clarity and confidence. The UAE are a great team and we are looking forward to taking them on again.”

SkyExchange.net have been named the Title sponsors, with Fancode broadcasting the matches Live in India and rest of the world available on CricTracker Facebook pages — as well on their YouTube channel. Additional regions; such as Geo Super in Pakistan, Willow TV in USA and Canada.