LAHORE: Six women umpires will officiate as many group matches in the National Triangular One-Day Women’s Cricket Championship which commences here from Tuesday with a match-up between Bismah Maroof-led PCB Challengers and Rameen Shamim-led PCB Blasters. The third competing outfit has been named as PCB Dynamites.

Afia Amin will be officiating the tournament opener. The other five women umpires are Humairah Farah, Shakila Rafiq, Riffat Mustafa, Nazia Nazir and Sabahat Rasheed.

The triangular one-day tournament, in which 42 players will feature, will help the women cricketers gear up for what will be a jam-packed cricket season with international commitments seeing them play Bangladesh in October and November, Asian Cricket Council Emerging Teams Asia Cup for ‘A’ Teams in October, England in December in the seventh round of ICC Women’s Championship and ICC Women’s T20 World Cup in Australia in February and March next year.

The final of the championship will be played on Sept 26. The winner will pocket Rs 500,000 and the runners-up team will be collecting a cheque of Rs 250,000.

In addition to this, for the first time, each player will be paid Rs 10,000 as match fee, while Kookaburra cricket balls will be used for the event to be played on a double-league basis.

All matches will be played at Lahore Gymkhana Ground and will start at 9.30am.

Published in Dawn, September 17th, 2019