Facing a top-tier side like reigning Women's ODI World Cup winners Australia, Pakistan opener Sidra Amin believes that playing against a side like the Meg Lanning-captained team will give them lots of learnings.
Pakistan are in Australia to play three ODIs slated to begin from January 16, as part of the ICC Women's Championship 2022-25. "Everyone knows that Australia is a great side, playing against them is a good omen.
It will help us to learn a lot," said Sidra to PCB Digital ahead of the ODI series. The first two ODIs will be played at the Allan Border Field in Brisbane on January 16 and 18, where Pakistan are currently practicing over the past four days.
For the final match of the series, to be held on January 21, the two teams will travel to Sydney. Pakistan enter the ODI series in good form, having acquired five wins from their six outings in the ICC Women's Championship.
They clinched a 2-1 win over Sri Lanka in Karachi in June last year and later achieved a 3-0 sweep over Ireland in Lahore later in November. Sidra, the right-handed opener, has been one of the star performers for Pakistan in ICC Women's Championship, amassing 495 runs in six matches, which is 155 runs ahead of second-placed India captain Harmanpreet Kaur, averaging 123.75, and an impressive strike-rate of 88.55.
In her last 10 innings, she has 653 runs, including three hundreds and two half-centuries. An instance of her attacking strokeplay came in an unbeaten 176 against Ireland in the ODI series opener in her hometown Lahore, recording the fifth-highest individual score in Women's ODIs.
Now, playing in Australia for the first time, Sidra is trying to get her preparation on point. "I am here in Australia for the first time, the conditions here are different to Pakistan as the ball rises a bit and I am trying to acclimatise as quickly as possible.
We had our preparation camps in Lahore and Karachi where we played some practice games before coming to Australia." "When you perform individually it helps your team, I will try to score runs which will ultimately benefit my team.
The message from coach and captain is very simple, go out and play positive cricket, score runs for the team and help the team do well." Asked about her role in the ODIs in Australia, Sidra said, "As an opener it is a challenging job to face two new balls in ODI cricket, you have to see off the new ball and at the same time score runs and give a good start to the innings.
Muneeba and I will look to give a good start to the innings so the batters coming after us should have the momentum to take it forward."