MURIDKE: Pakistan women’s cricket team captain Sana Mir wants the qualifying tournament formats to be just like the upcoming ICC Women’s World Cup format.

“The format for World Cup right now goes in the favour of the big teams, and I wonder who will speak for the smaller teams.

Therefore I would like to request the ICC that if they have done away with the semi-finals in the main event, and are going to judge the participating teams on points, then kindly also follow the same format in the qualifiers,” the young skipper told Dawn on Saturday.

“Like the qualifiers for the ICC Women's World Twenty20 coming up in 2014 will be held in Ireland in August. Since the World T20 tournament itself will be hosted by Bangladesh, they are already featuring in the main event and due to that there will be an opening for only one team among the eight competing in the qualifiers.

Normally, only the top two teams qualify for the World Cup. They can increase the number of teams featuring in the main tournaments to 10 so that at least two or three get a chance to qualify and play on merit,” she said.

“Pakistan and Sri Lanka are the top two teams playing the qualifiers for next year's World T20 and due to the old rules only one will qualify because of Bangladesh. Even in this World Cup the top six teams will automatically qualify for the 2017 World Cup. The teams ending up seventh and eighth will have to play the qualifiers for the next event, so I hope they would be treated fairly,” she said.