Malaysia Women

Kuala Lumpur, June 2024: Malaysia go through the ACC Women's T20 Premier Cup unbeaten in the group stage and reach the final, the furthest an Asian regional tournament of that size has taken them, before losing out and settling for the runners-up medal. It is the clearest marker yet of where the side sits in the region — closer to the top than the label "associate nation" suggests, still short of a first continental title.

The team traces itself to a match in Singapore on 30 April 2006, an away win by 58 runs that stands as the start of its competitive record; formal Twenty20 international status did not follow for another twelve years, once the International Cricket Council extended it to all member boards in 2018. Malaysia's own T20I debut, against India that June, came into a format the team had effectively been playing without the certificate for well over a decade.

Home games are split between the Selangor Turf Club and the Bayuemas Oval in Pandamaran, Klang, a 3,000-capacity ground with none of the pretension of a national stadium — cricket in Malaysia is still built around grounds like this rather than showpiece arenas. The fixture that matters most is against Singapore, played annually for the Saudari Cup, a rivalry that predates almost everything else in the team's history by definition, since Singapore supplied the opponent on day one.

Winifred Duraisingam captains the side and holds both the run-scoring and wicket-taking records, a rare combination that says as much about the squad's depth as about her own game. At the 2025 South East Asian Games, Malaysia went one place better than in 2017 and 2023, when they had taken bronze twice, and came home with silver.