A very mixed 2008

From the highs of qualifying for the ICC Women's World Cup and ICC World Twenty20, it has been frustrating not to continue that success. This was due to some disappointing performances at the Women's Asia Cup and then the cancellation of our home series, due to security fears, which saw both the West Indies and a women's team from Delhi postpone their trips.

Where we should have been able to build on some excellent performances in Stellenbosch, we perhaps haven't been able to move forward quite as quickly as we would have liked.

It has also been a period of change at the PCB and there have been a number of changes to the women's cricket management team in the past couple of months. This has led to a major review of team selection in the past couple of months with everybody playing for their places in the ICC Women's World Cup squad.

Fifty five girls have attended trials this month which were overseen by former Test players Aqib Javed and Ijaz Ahmed, which was a really good experience, and the selectors have now got the squad down to 25 players.

The trials saw us tested in a variety of disciplines to ensure that we can show our quality in all aspects of the game. For example, to demonstrate our batting prowess we had to face the bowling machine at varying different paces and lengths and were instructed to hit the ball between various different targets.

This would see us challenged to hit six consecutive balls that were pitched on a full length outside of off stump to be hit between cover and extra cover. Bowlers then had to show they could consistently bowl in the right places by bowling two overs at a time where each ball had to hit a particular target.

A training camp in Lahore starts on Sunday, at the National Cricket Academy, where we will spend the next month preparing for the ICC Women's World Cup and continue to work on different aspects of our game.

There will be a large focus on fitness and we will be training in both the morning and afternoon which will be extremely tough but it will help us prepare for the tri-series against Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in January, and the ICC events in 2009.