Pak retain Wahab Riaz as women’s team head coach for Asian Games
The Pakistan Cricket Board has retained head coach Wahab Riaz and the other coaches of the national women’s squad for the forthcoming Asia Cup in the UAE and the Asian Games in Japan. In another surprising call, the selectors have recalled senior batter Aliya Riaz for the Asian Games, even though she has not performed well since being dropped for the tour of Sri Lanka following a poor ICC T20 World Cup.
The selectors have also again ignored two top batters, Sidra Amin and Sadaf Shams, for both the T20 tournaments, as both have been deemed to be only ODI players. Sidra scored a hundred in the ODI series that Pakistan lost in Sri Lanka.
Pakistan lost both the ODI and T20 series in Sri Lanka and, before that, finished with just one win in the T20 World Cup under the management of Wahab, batting coach Imran Farhat, bowling coach Abdul Rehman and Umaid Asif. Regular captain Fatima Sana will lead the team in both tournaments after skipping the Sri Lanka T20I series due to her commitments with The Hundred.
The eight-team Women’s Asia Cup is set to be played from August 28 to September 13 at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium, with Pakistan placed in Group A alongside Hong Kong-China, India and Thailand.
Group B consists of Bangladesh, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the United Arab Emirates. At the Asian Games in Japan, Pakistan are seeded alongside Thailand and will play them in the September 17 quarterfinal.
All the matches are scheduled to take place at Korogi Athletic Park in Aichi, Japan. Pakistan will face either Sri Lanka or Malaysia if they qualify for the semifinal on September 20. The bronze and gold-medal matches will take place on September 22. Pakistan won gold in the 2010 and 2014 editions of the Asian Games women’s cricket event and finished fourth in the most recent 2022 edition.
