UAE women’s cricket moving in the right direction, Esha Oza

Dubai,
UAE women’s cricket captain Esha Oza, who was awarded the ICC Women’s Associate Cricketer of the Year 2024 award last Sunday, met with cricket legends Anjum Chopra and Urooj Mumtaz on the side-lines of the ongoing DP World ILT20 Season 3 and sought valuable advice from them ahead of an important year for UAE women with the ICC Women’s World Cup qualification at stake.
“It was great meeting Anjum and Urooj, both icons of the game and understanding from them how they dealt with pressure and to chat with them so openly and candidly was great. In 2022, when I won the ICC women’s associate cricketer award for the first time, I was super happy and, in a way, also ended up putting pressure on myself to live up to the expectations. Unfortunately I ended up having a bad outing in 2023. So, I really wanted to understand from them how they dealt with pressure,” expressed the 26-year-old.
While Urooj spoke about balancing the pressure and trusting the process, Anjum spoke about the benefits of soaking up the pressure when Esha faces tough teams. “It’s great that Esha has won this award twice. I am sure even without the award, she will carry that pressure of expectations to perform for the UAE team but I would say, that the best way to tackle pressure is to soak it up. Absorb that pressure instead of shunning it out. Learn to use the pressure to your potential instead of letting it get the better of you,” stated Anjum, former India women’s captain.
Esha also backed her team’s ambition of making the ICC Women’s World Cup this year and went on to state that it is a realistic goal to make the qualification after missing out last time. “Over the past three years, we have evolved as a team and have had more ups than downs. We want to build on those positives and believe that we have a realistic chance for making the qualification for the World Cup this year. We will be playing the Emerging Teams Asia Cup, where India A and Pakistan A side will also be playing. Asia Region qualifiers for the World Cup will follow and then the Global Qualifiers.”