Nazia Nazir who hails from Okara district in the Punjab province of Pakistan was brought to the umpiring field by her love and enthusiasm for the game. Portraying her story, Nazia said that she comes from a place where training for young girls was not unreasonably simple, yet her adoration for the game convinced her to venture out to Lahore to concentrate further and play cricket. During school days, she used to maintain a distance from attention as she didn’t need her family to realize that she was playing cricket.
“Due to opposition of my family members and despite working hard, I couldn’t represent Pakistan national team. I didn’t lose my hope there and decided to remain attached to the game and therefore pursued umpiring.” Said Nazia (as stated on cricketworld.com)
Nazia said, recalling her feelings about supervising her first game: “A night before supervising a local match, I couldn’t believe I was actually supervising the match and in excitement, couldn’t sleep all night. I still have no words to express how I felt when I was standing and supervising a women’s inter-departmental match.”
Nazia is one of six women’s umpires who supervise games of the continuing triangular women’s league that began on September 17 in Lahore.
“I have set a target for myself to be one of the umpires in the ICC’s panel. I am confident supervising matches in domestic matches will help me bring improvement in my umpiring decisions and graduate to the next level.”
This story was first published in Cricket World.
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