Cricket Peru recently announced the first ever women’s national squad, The Vicuñas, to compete in the Cricket South America Women’s Championship, in Brasilia, from 5^th – 9^th August. Newly-appointed women’s captain, Frances Carr, tells us about the background to and the feverish preparations for the tournament:

‘It is an exciting time in Peruvian cricket and it is amazing to be a part of it. I started playing cricket in 2010 when, after many afternoons sat watching the men play at Lima Cricket Club, the men decided to allow women to ‘have a go’. Peru wanted to develop women’s cricket and so in November 2010 we played an only women 20-20 game which was fun and a definite eye-opener: cricket no longer had the impression of being an old man’s village green sport.

Since then, Peru’s women’s team has gone from strength to strength. Many of the team played with the Kiteflyers as part of the development tournament in March and April this year, surprising people with skills that we didn’t know we had!

In August we will be travelling to Brasilia to compete in the Cricket South America Women’s Championship against Brazil, Chile and Argentina; and the Peruvian team has been training extremely hard three times a week learning lots of new batting, bowling and fielding techniques. It is an honour to have been selected as part of the team and to be named captain is incredible! Currently we are all focusing on learning to hit cover drives, and soon I will get an opportunity to ask people to go and stand at ‘square leg’, ‘third man’ and ‘in the slips’ (it’s amazing to think that we didn’t know any of these words a year ago!).

I very much hope that I can motivate the other women to do well in the competition in Brasilia and do Peru proud. GO VICUÑAS!’