A good tournament for me as a batsman © Tigercricket.com

Mithali Raj

We have won all our matches and that feels great but there is no point winning all the league matches if you lose the final – for then you’ve lost the Asia Cup. So we have to maintain our focus till the end.

What has been satisfying is that the girls who are making their debuts are performing really well and that shows that our standard is higher than the other sides. Pujare Seema, who is the tournament’s highest wicket-taker with 11 from four games, has been impressive. She has the slow loop of an offspinner and on a turning wicket she can give a lot of problems. With Jhulan Goswami getting 100 wickets, we now have two players – the other being Neetu David – in the side who have reached the landmark. Now I’m looking forward to other bowlers getting to that milestone – Rumeli Dhar and Amita Sharma.

	Urooj Mumtaz shakes hands with her Bangladeshi counterpart, Salma Khatun, before a match © TigerCricket.com

Four matches, four defeats is not exactly how I imagined our Asia Cup campaign would begin. Quite simply, our batting, bowling and fielding hasn't been up to the levels that I would expect considering the ability of players in our team.

We always knew that it would be a challenge to take on the likes of India and Sri Lanka, who are two of the best sides in the world, but we shouldn't really being losing to Bangladesh. However, we have been really impressed with how they have taken the playing at this level and they should be congratulated on the impact that they have on this tournament in their inaugural appearance.

The main positive to take from the event so far was our performance against Sri Lanka in our return match. In all honesty, we probably should have won but once again our batting let us down. We know that we need to eliminate this habit of losing wickets in quick succession if we are to have an impact at the ICC Women's World Cup next year.

	India have won all three Asia Cups © AFP

We are playing international cricket after more than a year and everyone is looking forward to that. But it’s not like we have been idle since the Quadrangular tournament in February.

In September the new domestic season started and this year we had two-day games for the inter-state tournament and the qualifiers for the nationals. Then in February for the first time we had the Challenger Trophy for women. The board had approached us once they planned the tournament and I was happy they wanted the same format that we wanted. The games were interesting because the national players were sorted into the three teams, so it wasn’t as if 10 India players were in one side, because then you can’t really find out how good a player is.

I keep an eye on any young talent coming up the ranks in domestic cricket. In fact anyone who plays well against my team, Railways, which is the strongest in women’s cricket, is someone who soon can make it to the national side. Lots of very young girls play against us in the domestic circuit.

To bat alongside Brendon McCullum in the Twenty20 World Cup 2009 © Getty Images

Life has been absolutely crazy since we qualified for the ICC Women’s World Cup following our performances in Stellenbosch, South Africa in February.

The difference in interest from the media has been absolutely amazing and there seems to be a growing recognition from people within our country that there is a Pakistan women’s cricket team as well and that is a massive step forward for us.

When we arrived back in Pakistan at 4AM from South Africa, it seemed like every major news channel was there to greet us which was a really nice surprise. My only worry was how I looked on camera as I had been sat on a plane for almost a whole day, as we had flown back via Johannesburg and Dubai!