USA Women’s squad remained unbeaten in the 3-match 2019 ICC Women’s Americas Qualifiers in Florida, as they beat Canada Women’s team on the final day of the competition to advance to the 2020 ICC Women’s T20 World Cup Qualifiers in Scotland later in 2019, and also for the 2021 ICC Women’s World Cup Qualifiers to be held in 2020.
The Americas qualifiers, being organised as a stand-alone regional qualifying tournament, saw USA Women post comfortable victories in all the 3 official T20I matches against their Canadian counterparts. Led brilliantly by captain Sindhu Sriharsha (80 runs in 3 matches), USA Women were always going to be a tough proposition for Canada and they were found wanting heavily in their batting department in all the three matches. Canada’s main batter Achini Perera (44 runs in 3 matches) disappointed with the bat as seen in the recent past that Canada Women rely on her starts to put up good scores on board.
USA bowlers Uzma Iftikhar (4 wickets in 3 matches) and Lisa Ramjit (5 wickets in 3 matches) were the standout performers in the bowling department, while Saniyah Zia (4 wickets in 3 matches) was the top pick among the Canadian bowlers in the series.
Erica Rendler (61 runs in 3 matches) and Shebani Bhaskar (52 runs in 3 matches) provided good support to Sindhu as both provided good starts to USA while batting first at Central Broward Regional park stadium in Lauderhill. Kamna Mirchandani (49 runs from 3 matches) was the top scorer for Canada Women in the series.
Both USA Women and Canada Women played preparatory matches against an ICC Americas select XI and Trinidad & Tobago Development XI prior to the qualifiers and one hopes to see the likes of Argentina, Brazil, Chile & Mexico also take part in the future editions of ICC qualifying tournaments in the Americas region.
USA Women join Thailand Women (Asia Qualifier), Papua New Guinea Women (EAP Qualifier) and Zimbabwe Women (Africa Qualifier) in the global qualifiers. Only the European regional qualifiers remain to be contested now between Scotland, Netherlands and Germany. While Scotland Women are already qualified for the T20 global qualifiers as the host’s, they will be competing for the spot in the global qualifiers for Women’s World Cup.
