Sana Mir: Walking into the fire
Sana Mir, the former captain of the Pakistan women’s cricket team, is quite likely the most admired and successful female athlete in the history of Pakistan.
She has had a very interesting past year, marked by a difficult showing at the Women’s World Cup (WWC) 2017 but also some memorable personal performances.
After our team lost all its matches at the WWC 2017, the conflict between Sana — who was the captain at that time — and the coach was made public by the ‘leaking’ of the coach’s confidential report to the media and Mir’s public response via social media.
However, she returned to the team and has been in good form. In the ICC Championship series against New Zealand in November 2017, her four-wicket haul helped her team make history and secure Pakistan’s maiden ODI win against the Kiwis.
In the recently concluded ICC Championship series against Sri Lanka in March 2018, Sana helped secure two of the three ODI wins for Pakistan in their clean sweep of the ODI series and is now ranked number four in the ICC women’s ODI bowlers in the world.
This is the highest ODI ranking any Pakistani woman cricketer has ever achieved. She is also ranked number six ODI all-rounder in the world.
We talked about the past year — the transitions, challenges and triumphs and her definition of leadership.
The interview below has been edited for brevity and clarity.
This is the first half of the final installment of a four-part series of interviews with two seniors and two newcomers to the women’s squad, which played at the Women's Twenty20 Asia Cup in Malaysia from June 3-10, 2018. Read part 1 here, part 2 here and part 3 here.
The past couple of years have been both challenging and important for you in terms of transitions, difficulties, achievements. Let’s start with that….
The year started with a big challenge with the Women’s World Cup Qualifiers (WCQ) in Sri Lanka in February 2017. To qualify for the tournament was important for two reasons.
First, to qualify for the WWC 2017, but more importantly for all the ICC Championship bilateral series that we are now playing — like the ones against New Zealand and Sri Lanka.
The future of women’s cricket in Pakistan depended on the WCQ as we don’t get much bilateral cricket other than the ICC Championship.
Qualification for this tournament not only guarantees you a place at the world cup, it also guarantees the top eight teams seven ICC Championship series with each other for two years.
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This gives us more opportunities to experiment with youngsters and help them develop because now we have at least three matches per series.
In these series, we can give new players leeway. But in tournaments like the qualifiers, you have to get results. You can’t develop players like that.
So qualifying in that tournament has been really good for women’s cricket in Pakistan.
The preparation for the WCQ and WWC 2017 were affected by the constant change of coaches and players and last moment injuries.
It was harder to stay with the team at that time than to leave. But I felt that leaving was not the right thing to do at that point. So I chose to do it after the world cup.
You chose to step away after the world cup?
Yes, after the world cup because once the team had qualified, there was a future for women’s cricket.
The departure of a senior player before a world cup or a qualifier would have impacted the team for the whole tournament and in the coming years.
It could have had a negative impact on the younger players as well. They would have felt abandoned and I didn’t want to do that.
I knew it was going to be a tough world cup with a new coach. It would have been difficult to be on the same page or make effective strategies to win, because everything would be so new.
But I still took on the challenge because walking away at that point would have been more disastrous for the team.
I quite willingly walked into what I anticipated would be a difficult situation.
I understand why you walked into fire, so to speak, but I want to know how you did it….
I think the only thing that helped me was taking it one day at a time, doing my best in the moment and trying to be present for the people who were around me.
Not thinking: What will happen to me after the world cup? What will people say about me? How will we do in the world cup? Will we win or lose?
For example, I came in to bat against New Zealand after we were three down with the Kiwi bowler on a hat-trick. I just did what I could and scored a 50 in that match.
So, it helped me personally and it helped us to do whatever we could as a team.
We fought in every match. Yes, we didn’t win, but even with the new team and other changes that posed difficulties, every day when we went to the ground — each and every one of us — we fought our hearts out.
That’s something I am very proud of. We came close to beating other teams in at least three or four games and it couldn’t have happened if the girls were not ready to fight.
This is something that makes it worth the struggle and difficulties we went through.