Zimbabwe reach Cup qualifiers

Zimbabwe’s women made history in Nairobi on Sunday when they won the Africa region of the women’s world cup qualifiers to reach next year’s ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup Qualifying Tournament in Pakistan.

Zimbabwe, making its international debut, remained undefeated in the four-team competition played between 8 and 10 December.

Besides Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Uganda and hosts Kenya also took part in the round-robin event.

Zimbabwe defeated Uganda by 63 runs, beat Kenya by 104 runs and then beat Tanzania by 82 runs in the last game to top the table. Tanzania finished second with two wins, Uganda had one win and home side was winless.

In the last league match, after both Zimbabwe and Tanzania won their first two matches, Zimbabwe batted first and scored 145 for nine from the allotted 50 overs.

In turn, Tanzania were bowled out for 63 in 40.1 overs with player-of-the-match Julia Chibhabha claiming three wickets for 10 runs.

Zimbabwe that will travel to Pakistan late next year where eight qualifiers will vie for two available slots in the 2009 ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup line-up.

Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Bermuda, Ireland, South Africa and Zimbabwe are already through to that penultimate stage along with Scotland and the Netherlands with the latter two also playing each other in the European regional tournament in the Netherlands next summer.

For the 2009 ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup, defending champions Australia, India, England, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and West Indies have earned automatic qualification following their top-six finish in the 2005 Women’s Cricket World Cup in Pretoria.

The 2009 ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup will be the first to be played under the auspices of the ICC since its merger with the International Women’s Cricket Council last year. The IWCC had 15 members and since integration the women’s game has been growing fast.

There are now 42 members with formal girls and/or women’s teams playing in structured cricket competitions. A further 23 do not have competition teams yet but do have girls in junior development initiatives. That makes 65 of ICC’s 97 members with some women’s cricket and it is growing all the time.