The senior ladies national cricket team, under the tutelage of Joshua Mwanja, has started preparations ahead of the World Cup qualifiers tournament. The qualifiers tournament is scheduled for May 3-13 in Zimbabwe. The cricketers have started with light training, a three-hour session a day at Kicukiro grounds, and they will be embarking on intensive preparations from April 23 when they will be having two drills a day. Talking to Saturday Sport on Friday, team captain Sarah Uwera said that the non-residential training was going on well, and every player on the time was upbeat ahead of the qualifiers. “The training is going well. We are working hard to be ready for some really strong teams come May in Zimbabwe,” she said. He added, “We are waiting to see if the cricket association will secure one or two friendly matches so we can test and asses ourselves ahead of the competition.” Besides Rwanda and the hosts, the ten-day long qualifiers tournament will also attract Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Uganda. The team had a series of friendlies against their Nigeria counterparts in January, in Abuja, where the hosts won the bilateral international series 3-2. In an interview with this publication after the Nigeria Tour, head coach Mwanja said his side had picked some positives from the series, noting that “it was a great learning experience.” editor@newtimesrwanda.com