Before the women's team came under the auspices of the Pakistan Cricket Board in 2005, she attended a training camp at the home of Shaiza and Sharmeen Khan, the sisters who started the national team in the '90s and whose father, a wealthy businessman, financed their tours and in some cases housed and clothed the players.
Shaiza Khan told The Guardian in 2000 that religious opposition receded after she promised a fundamentalist leader the team would never play against men, but the PCB continued to make their lives a bureaucratic nightmare.
“It had been a childhood dream of ours to play for Pakistan and we thought that we could just start up a team," Khan said at the time. "We didn't have proper knowledge. Benazir Bhutto had just taken over the leadership of Pakistan and people were worried that women were going to take over everything."
