ICC Women’s Emerging Nations Trophy set to light up Bangkok 

• All matches will be streamed live on ICC.tv

A new era in women’s international cricket starts with the inaugural edition of the ICC Women’s Emerging Nations Trophy that gets underway in Bangkok on 20 November, an initiative to give more competitive cricket to the leading women’s Associate Member teams.

With Zimbabwe newly promoted to become the 11th team in the ICC Women’s Championship, the leading eight Associate teams in women’s cricket will get the opportunity to play seven matches each in the tournament. The competing teams are ranked from 11th to 19th in the women’s T20I rankings, so every match is expected to be competitive.

Scotland are the highest ranked at 11th place, having just overtaken Thailand by beating them by two wickets from the last ball of a very exciting game to win the Quad Cup recently in Bangkok. The Scots are captained by Sarah Bryce in the absence of her sister Kathryn, and they won all their three matches in the Quad Cup despite not playing since the 50-over World Cup Qualifier in Pakistan where they beat the West Indies. They took part in the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2024 in UAE, so also have good experience in T20I cricket.

Hosts Thailand are ranked next. They were the winners of the ICC T20 World Cup Asia Qualifier also held in Bangkok in May, and finished in second place in the Quad Cup with two wins in three matches in what was their first outing under new coach South African Peter-John Jansen. He has spent the last two months with the team in High Performance Camps in South Africa and India so Thailand will be looking to maintain their high standards.

The top four Thai batters all had excellent tournaments in the Quad Cup as Nattaya Boochatham and Chanida Sutthiruang produced a series of useful opening stands to give Nannapat Khoncharoenkai and Natthakan Chantam the opportunity to go for their shots. Natthakan’s beautifully paced unbeaten 45 took her side to victory over Papua New Guinea (PNG) to claim second place. Thailand’s spinners are often their strength backed up by their excellence in the field with Onnicha Khamchompu taking her first five-wicket haul against Namibia with her off-spin and Thipatcha Putthawong taking three for 18 against Scotland with her left-arm spin.

PNG are ranked 13th after winning the East-Asia Pacific (EAP) Qualifier held in Fiji by beating Vanuatu in the final with captain Brenda Tau at the helm with bat and behind the stumps. The top four is completed by the Netherlands, who are ranked 15th after finishing second to Ireland in the Europe Qualifier held in the Netherlands. Their star player is Sterre Kalis, who has built up an outstanding reputation in T20 cricket so that she spent the summer playing for Birmingham Phoenix in the Women’s Hundred after also playing for Warwickshire.

One of the best stories of the year in women’s cricket was the highs and lows experienced by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), who came to Thailand in May as one of the favourites to reach the final stage of qualifying for the ICC Women’s World Cup but were surprisingly beaten by Nepal as well as by Thailand.

Their captain Esha Oza was in tears after the loss, but the UAE were awarded ODI status soon after and enjoyed an excellent tour to Zimbabwe and are returning to Bangkok with another chance to win a major international tournament. They are ranked 16th but Oza is undoubtedly one of the best cricketers at this level and has the power to inspire her team to higher levels.

The last three teams in the Emerging Nations tournament all come from the African continent and they all reached the semi-finals of the ICC Women’s World T20 African Qualifier held in Namibia. Uganda are now ranked 17th, having just beaten Canada 5-0 in a T20I series but they had lost to Zimbabwe in the African Qualifier semi-finals.

Namibia are in 18th place despite losing all three of their matches in the Quad Cup and they beat Tanzania in the Africa semi-finals before losing to Zimbabwe in the final. Tanzania are the lowest ranked team in the competition in 19th place but there is the opportunity for all these teams to move up or down in the rankings depending on their results in the next 10 days.

The ICC Women’s Emerging Nations Trophy gets underway on at the TCG and the AIT grounds in Bangkok with all eight teams playing on the seven match-days of the tournament. Matches are played at both grounds at 09h30 and 13h45 and the fixtures on the opening day feature Thailand against the Netherlands followed by Scotland against Uganda at TCG, while PNG face the UAE and Namibia play Tanzania at the AIT Ground.

An earlier media release on the announcement of the tournament is available here.