Bismah Maroof

Bismah Maroof's 17-year international career started in 2006, when she was 15, and is one that helped pave and trace the path for women's cricket in Pakistan. She finished as the country's scorer in ODIs (3369) and T20Is (2893), captained the team in 96 games, was a two-time Asian Games winner and was the reason the PCB created a maternity policy, of which she was the first beneficiary, when she was expecting her daughter, Fatima.

Maroof represented Pakistan in four editions of the Women's ODI World Cup, including the 2022 edition where she was captain six months after giving birth, and eight editions of the T20 World Cup, leading them in 2020 and 2023, and the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Pakistan also beat New Zealand for the first time in an ODI and swept Sri Lanka 3-0.

Women's cricket always got the short straw in Pakistan, which meant that despite major strides in her era, there were no systems in place for identifying or grooming talent. The constant flux in administration didn't help either and the results under Maroof's captaincy - 27 wins in 62 T20Is and 16 wins in 34 ODIs - reflected that.

Maroof's contributions were more than the numbers anyway. She was a bridge between generations, and helped put women's cricket in Pakistan on the map. And as she put it herself, "cricket taught me life lessons that I wouldn't have understood had I sat at home".