NUR Dania Syuhada Abdul Samad is a lanky, pretty 19-year-old who had dreams of being an air hostess. Her father said no but she is adamant about at least becoming a model, or something glamorous which involves dressing up and make-up. Her 16-year-old friend Nur Alia Khairun, meanwhile, wants to be a doctor while Suabika Manivannan, also 16, wants to be a ground engineer in the armed forces. Dania is a Melanau-Bugis girl from Kuching, while Alia, who goes by the name Soya, is a local Malay from the Chinese-dominated town of Jenjarom in Selangor. Suabika’s mother is a Filipina while her father is a Malaysian Indian and she grew up in the remote seaside village of Lahad Datu in Sabah. No wonder then that she wants to be in the armed forces.

The three girls can’t be more diverse, yet they all have the same aim now – to ensure that the Malaysian Under-19 women’s cricket team make the country proud at the World Cup Finals, which Malaysia will host from Jan 16-Feb 3. All three are in the 21-girl training squad, which will be trimmed to 15, with three reserves by December. Dania, who picked up cricket when she was a 10-year-old in Year 4 in SK Tabuan Hilir in Kuching, is a girl with a fiercely independent streak. As a young girl, she left her family home and studied at SMK Tunku Indra Petra in Kelantan where she continued to play the game. That earned her a place at the Bukit Jalil Sports School. She hardly gets to see her parents – her father runs an oil palm plantation – and her younger sister, but she says her goals are more important. She is also part of the senior national team and her most memorable game was when the team gave fancied Hong Kong a massive fight before losing in the 2022 Commonwealth Games qualifiers. It was also the last game played at the Kinrara Oval, probably the best cricket pitch in the country. She is now doing her sports science and fitness degree at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia in Skudai, Johor, and travels to Kuala Lumpur for training four days a week. “My classes are on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. On Tuesday evenings, I drive to KL to join the team in training.

‘’Each day is hectic. She trains with the Under-19 team in the morning, the senior national team in the evening and hits the books by night. And on Saturdays, she drives back to Johor. “I just wish I could get some good sleep,” she says. Why does she want to be a model? “I like putting on make-up and I have a cousin who is a model. I want to be like her.” But first things first. She now wants to finish her degree and do well with the national teams. Soya, meanwhile, says she had to do her early schooling in Subang because there was no school in little Jenjarom. Every day, she travelled to Subang to study and to train with her schoolmates. She moved to SMK Sultan Abdul Samad in Klang when she was called up for selection. She failed to make the cut the first time but once Selangor, with her in the side, finished second at the recent Sukma in Sarawak, she was again called up. This time, she has made the cut. So far, at least. The girl, who says national player Wan Julia is her idol, wants to emulate her heroine and represent the country by the time she is 20. Her long-term aim, though, is to study medicine.

Why is she called Soya? “Well, my older sister was born with darker skin and everyone said it was because my mother drank a lot of coffee. So, when she was pregnant with me, she drank a lot of soy bean milk. And I became known as Soya,” laughed the girl who also has an older brother and a younger sister. Suabika, meanwhile, graduated from online cricket to the real thing. She said she was a middle distance runner while in primary school at SK Sahabat 4 in Lahad Datu but fell in love with cricket during the Covid-19 pandemic when she was playing the game online. When she was in Form 1 after the pandemic, she started playing cricket for her school and was spotted a year later and picked to play for the state. She even got called up to the national Under-19 team but could not qualify as she was underage. Still, she accompanied the senior team to the Asia Cup in Sri Lanka and was called up for the Under-19 World Cup, even though she did not play at the last Sukma because of an injury. Injuries, however, are not going to stop the youngest of seven children. Or her two friends, all of whom are bent on giving a good show in January.

National women’s Under-19 coach Job van Bunge also has great expectations of Suabika, Dania and two others – Erdina Beh Nabil and Nur Izzatul Syafiqa Binti Fajrol’ As. Suabika, he says, is a natural talent who bowled very well in the senior women’s Asia Cup in July while Dania, a spin bowler, is also a very “clever cricketer” who is well advanced for her age. Erdina, he says, is a very brainy all-rounder while Izzatul had a “good head on her shoulders” as she showed in the Asia Cup by taking several wickets. Soya, he says, could be next in line. The Dutchman admits that Malaysian cricket is well behind countries like Australia, England, India and Pakistan that have the “sport in their blood.” However, women’s cricket is almost a new ball game and he expects the Malaysian girls to show they can be up there with the best in about three to five years. “The talent is there but they lack the development and experience. Given that, they can go far and even play in top countries or in the Women’s Professional Cricket League. “We can use Thailand as a role model. They started on their development programme about 10 years ago. Now, they are among the top 12 nations in the world. We can do it too,” he says. The national women’s under-19 team are already learning from the Thais. They are there now on a two-week training and playing stint. And with a coach like Van Bunge working on them, the girls could really be ready to bloom into world beaters real soon.