USA went down to a warm-up defeat by 58 runs to the in-form Thailand Women side at Arbroath CC yesterday but there was pleasing time in the middle for many of USA’s top order batters and wickets for Sara Farooq, Onika Wallerson and Samantha Ramautar.
In spite of that defeat, Julia Price has been pleased with the preparations for her side and although she acknowledges it is a big step up in level to the Global Qualifier, the former Australian International feels her side can compete. She said “We’ve prepared well for this crucial event and spent time acclimatising to the conditions in England before our journey up here to Scotland and the squad has bonded superbly during this period. There’s no doubt the weather and wind that we’ve been having has provided some challenges but we won’t have any excuses as a group and we will go and play our brand of cricket.”
Price continued, “With the format of the tournament we know we’ll have to get off to a good start and against the home side, Scotland we will need to be at our best. This is the level that we want to be at though for Women’s Cricket in America and if we can play to our potential, there’s no reason why we can’t have success here in Scotland.”
The three USA group matches all start at 2pm local time/9am EST and there are reserve days throughout the tournament in case of any weather interruptions. Join us via @USACricket on social and on usacricket.org as we bring you coverage of the whole campaign for Team USA.
Team USA Squad:
Sindhu Sriharsha, Captain/WK (California)
Shebani Bhaskar Vice Captain (Mass)
Claudine Beckford (Missouri/Germany)
Sara Farooq (New Jersey)
Nadia Gruny (Florida)
Uzma Iftikhar (California)
Sugetha Kalyanaraman Chandhrasekar (California)
Mahika Kandanala (Texas)
Geetika Kodali (North Carolina)
Samantha Ramautar(New York)
Lisa Ramjit (Maryland)
Akshatha Rao (California)
Erica Rendler (California)
Onika Wallerson (New Jersey)
Schedule
Qualifier group stage
31 August: USA v Scotland (2.00pm, Forfarshire Cricket Club)
1 September: USA v Bangladesh (2.00pm, Arbroath Cricket Club)
3 September: USA v Papua New Guinea (2.00pm, Arbroath Cricket Club)
Finals stages
5 September: Semi-Finals
7 September: Final
