England and Australia’s cricketers get the first match of their limited-overs series underway tomorrow when they meet at Dubai’s ICC Academy.
Kent’s Tammy Beaumont will lead the England Women’s Academy team in the Emirates, where they will face their Australian equivalents: the Commonwealth Bank Shooting Stars.
The two sides will meet in four ODI matches with the first tomorrow, before the teams meet again two days later.
The third and fourth matches will be on April 6 and 8 before they clash in the two-match T20 series on April 11 and 12.
With key tournaments coming up over the next year including the Ashes series in July in England, Beaumont said she is relishing the challenge of leading the England team, which also contains 2014 Ashes winners Georgia Elwiss and Natasha Farrant.
The Kent wicketkeeper-batter enjoyed a run-laden trip to Sri Lanka last year, striking nearly 300 runs at an average of 74, and is hopeful of similar success this year when they face their Australian counterparts.
“It’s a real honour to be awarded the captaincy for this tour,” Beaumont told ecb.co.uk. “I did it last year and really, really enjoyed it. It’s a good challenge to captain against the Aussies and we’ve got a really good team that can hopefully pull together and put in some good performances against the Aussie girls.
“The Australian women’s cricket team is a really high-class team so I’m sure, just like us, they’re going to have some serious players coming through underneath.
“It’s going to be a really good chance to see what the next-best Australian girls are and show them what the next-best England girls have got, too.”
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