ZIMBABWE women’s cricket captain, Mary-Anne Musonda, is hoping the team will book a ticket to next year's T20 World Cup Global Qualifier when they take part in the regional competition which kicks off in Uganda tomorrow.
The Lady Chevrons are scheduled to fly out to Uganda today for the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup Qualifier Africa, where two groups of four will battle for two places to proceed to the next phase of the competition.
Zimbabwe are in Group A that has Tanzania, Kenya, and Botswana, while Group B comprises Namibia, hosts Uganda, Rwanda, and Nigeria.
The top two teams from each group qualify for the semifinals, but only the winner and runner-up book the two slots to the Global Qualifiers next year.
The locals took their preparations to India and hosted the South Africa Emerging Women side in Harare in their quest to conquer Africa yet again.
“I think we can’t underestimate the SA Emerging squad. They have shown that they really improved from the last time and for us it’s a big challenge, these are the kind of competitive games we want to be playing and we were hoping to end the series on a high,” Musonda told NewsDay Sport.
The teams are expected to arrive in Uganda today with the captains’ shoot and practice matches pencilled for tomorrow. The Gary Brent-coached side kickstart their semifinal hunt with a date against Kenya at 8:30am local time. Zimbabwe play their second match against Botswana on Monday and wind offtheir round robin matches against Tanzania on Wednesday at Entebbe Cricket Ground, which is set to host double headers.
Musonda went down memory lane, recalling their last trip to Uganda in March 2019 aboard an Ethiopian airline, barely a week after one of its Boeing destined for Kenya crashed shortly after take-off near Addis Ababa killing all the passengers on board from 35 different countries. They had a successful outing however, winning the Victoria Tri Series that featured hosts Uganda and Kenya, a build-up to the 2019 Women Africa Qualifier hosted and won by Zimbabwe.
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“Some of these things are beyond our control. We are just going there (Uganda) hoping that everything we go for will happen, not really worried about the flights. There’s nothing to worry about to be honest, there haven’t been any incidents so far,” added Musonda.
“Obviously there’s a bit of discomfort but we leave it in the capable hands of the airlines and everyone else who runs those airlines otherwise we are just going to Uganda to qualify. It means a lot to us that we really want to qualify for the World Cup and it’s all these tournaments that will count.”
