When Fatima Sana was given the job of Pakistan captain in August 2024, she had 40 T20I caps to her name, a batting average under 20, a top score of 35* and a bowling average over 30. She also had less than six weeks to make the team hers before the T20 World Cup.
Almost two years later, she has played 18 more T20Is and in those games, has a batting average of 50, a top score of 90 and a bowling average under 24. Pakistan have won just seven of those games and only one series, against Zimbabwe, but her performances alone suggest that she's leading the way.
Sana is just 24 years old but already has seven years of experience as an international, after debuting at the age of 17. She has captained Pakistan through the toughest of personal and professional times, and has maintained a steely maturity throughout. In her first major tournament in charge, her father suddenly passed away. She left the team camp to attend his funeral but returned to play. She sobbed through the national anthem, opened the bowling and top-scored, though Pakistan suffered a chastening defeat to the eventual champions New Zealand.
A year later, she took the ODI side to the World Cup, where geopolitics left them isolated in Sri Lanka while the bulk of the action happened in India. They went winless. But Sana was their leading wicket-taker and took them as close as they could come to a win with an epic performance against England. Sana's 4 for 27 had England on the brink, and eventually, England were only saved by rain.
Since then, she has been unstoppable. In her first series after the ODI World Cup, batting at No. 8, Sana scored 90 off 41 balls in a T20I in Potchefstroom as Pakistan set South Africa 181 to win. South Africa did chase it down, but only on the last ball. Sana's score was the highest by any women's batter at No.7 or lower in a T20I. In the third match, which Pakistan won, she based an unbeaten 47* off 30 balls. She finished that T20I series as the leading run-scorer with a strike rate of 184.81 and went on to score back-to-back fifties in the ODI series that followed.
She saved her destructive best for another southern African side: Zimbabwe. On their maiden trip to Pakistan, Sana welcomed them with a brutal 62* off 19 balls and, in the process, set the record for the fastest fifty in women's T20Is, off 15 deliveries. Zimbabwe are newcomers to the women's FTP and very much a side in development, but Sana's 10 fours and two sixes was a clear display of intense power hitting, on both sides of the ground. What stood out was her bravery to go aerial, her strong stride forward, and the force with which he struck the ball.
She was the series' second leading-run scorer and second-highest wicket-taker as she stamped her name all over it and the hope is that she will continue to do that at this World Cup. "Fatima is a player with a huge amount of potential and she has a lot of ability to play all-round cricket. She is a dynamic leader and a very important member of our team," Aliya Riaz, the Pakistan allrounder who has played 110 T20Is told ESPNcricinfo. "I hope she plays well in this tournament, in all departments. She's improving day by day as a captain. She is very young and learning every day."
While Riaz has only captained briefly, in interim capacity in 2021, she has 12 years of international experience and is very much part of Pakistan's senior core. As such, she has been a sounding board for Sana, with whom she has joined forces with the aim of developing Pakistan cricket as much as possible. "As a young captain, whenever she's come to me, we always talk about improving our game and improving our cricket. We discuss this a lot with each other," Riaz said.
And they need to. Pakistan have been underperformers at major tournaments and have only won nine of their 36 matches in nine T20 World Cups. In the last four editions, they have only won a game at each event and they have never been to a knockout. There's a sense that if they are going to, Sana will have to be the one to take them there, and for her to do that, she may need to bat higher.
She has inched up from No. 8 to No. 6 (where she has her best strike-rate of 184.61), even though it feels as though No. 5 could be her most effective spot. Why isn't she there already? It may simply be that the triple task of captaining, opening the bowling (which she is certain to do in England) and batting in the top five would be too much. Pakistan have other players to build the innings upfront. What Pakistan has to hope is that they step up and give Sana the breathing room to ensure she isn't carrying the team alone.
Already, Sana is in both their all-time top 10 T20 run-scorers' and wicket-taker's charts and her trajectory suggests she could end near the top of both. More importantly, she has the opportunity to create a legacy, with a team that is truly hers.