Women's Cricket Tour to Nantes
This was huge step in Women's Cricket with the matches awarded official International T20 Status. The matches in the tournament took place on turf wickets and for many this was the first time they were introduced to this type of surface. The heat was an extremely challenging factor and the Women really felt this but they came through it by staying mentally strong. They really enjoyed themselves and had a lot of fun. They learnt something from each match and will now take this forward to aid in their development.
The Squad was well led by captain Razia Ali Zade and vice-captain Farial Safdar. The team showed so much unity and spirit backed up with lots of character. They will continue to learn and develop their skills from a tournament like this and hope to compete in more events to help their team and individual statistics.
I am extremely happy with the way the Women have participated in this tournament. They continue to improve every time they compete on the field and during their training sessions back in Norway. We have seen some individual brilliance amongst some of the players, but the most important feature has been the character that each and every player has showed throughout the competition. They have really showed a lot of energy and really helped each other when things were not going right for us. They have shown great team spirit and camaraderie. It's now really important that we are back in Norway and we focus on what we experienced and take this forward in our development.
We created a historic moment when we won our first ever recognised ICC T20 game against Austria. This was a special moment in the history of Women's Cricket in Norway. We hope to participate regularly in tournaments and create more opportunities to climb up the ICC Women's Cricket pathway.
Scorecards from the matches in Nantes can be found below:
Shaz Khan - National Team Coach
