Long wait over as New Zealand gear up for ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2022 

Dubai, March 03, 2022 (PPI-OT):Captain Sophie Devine says she’ll be too excited to sleep as New Zealand prepare to open the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2022 on Friday.

The White Ferns will take on the West Indies at the Bay Oval in Tauranga with the tournament getting underway a year later than planned due to COVID-19.

New Zealand head into the tournament off the back of a 4-1 series win against India and a thumping victory over Australia in their second warm-up match, including 161 not out for Devine, the perfect starter to the mega attraction of the World Cup.

“It’s hugely exciting. It’s been a tournament that’s long been coming up with Covid delays here and there but to think that we finally here, tomorrow it all kicks off, it is certainly extremely exciting,” she said.

“I know this group is ready, we have obviously had fantastic prep, we have come off a heavy diet of cricket over the summer and I don’t think we could be any better prepared heading into this World Cup, so we’re really excited to finally get going. It’ll be interesting to see how the sleep goes tonight. I’ve tried to have a few naps today and they’ve not been that successful!”

New Zealand sit in fifth in the MRF Tyres ICC ODI team rankings, but Devine knows that the whole of Aotearoa will be hoping they are in the final come 3 April.

She added: “This tournament has been a long time coming and there is absolutely going to be nerves, there is going to be pressure, there is going to be expectation. We’d be silly to think that those things won’t be there, especially being a home World Cup and the host country, there is expectation there.

“But again, we’ve spoken at length as a group that we can only control what we can control and that is out on that cricket field. We’re embracing all the small wee different things but there’s a lot of familiarity. Obviously coming back here to Bay Oval, we have played a lot of cricket here, we’ve done a lot of training camps here, so it’s nice to come back to familiar surroundings.

“At the end of the day, we just need to focus on what we can control and it’s another game of cricket, so we just need to make sure that we’re tuned into that.”

For her opposing number, West Indies captain Stafanie Taylor, the pressure New Zealand may be under is of no concern.

She said: “We don’t talk about if they’re under pressure. I think that’s for them, we tried to zone in on us and what we need to do to perform well. We had a practice session today and we worked on areas that we need to work on to prepare ourselves for tomorrow.

“Anything we do tomorrow, we just know we have to do it well, you have to play to the best of your ability. New Zealand is in good form, but it’s all about the day and who’ll perform.”

The Windies have set a goal of scoring more than 200 runs when batting, something they failed to do in their warm-up losses to Australia and India.

Taylor said: “We had our meeting and we said that to be competitive, we have to be scoring over 200 runs and, in the two games that we played, we didn’t do. So that’s something that we’ve had a look at and moving forward that is something that we need to work on.”

The tournament opener begins at 2pm local time at the Bay Oval, Tauranga.

For more information, contact:
Headquarters,
International Cricket Council (ICC)
Street 69, Dubai Sports City,
Sh Mohammed Bin Zayed Road, Dubai, UAE
Phone: +97-143828800
Fax: +97-143828600
E-mail: enquiry@icc-cricket.com
Website: www.icc-cricket.com

Broadcast details of ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2022 announced 

Dubai, March 03, 2022 (PPI-OT):The International Cricket Council today announced the details of its broadcast arrangements for the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2022 including a star-studded commentary panel that will provide expert opinion during the eight-team tournament in New Zealand from 4 March to 3 April.

All matches of the prestigious tournament will be covered live by broadcast partners around the world, who will access a fully produced world feed programme from ICC TV using a minimum of 24 cameras at each of the six venues. The Decision Review System (DRS) will be available at all matches.

The commentary panel includes ICC Hall of Famers Debbie Hockley and Lisa Sthalekar, Anjum Chopra, Simon Doull, Mel Jones, Nasser Hussain, Lesley Murdoch, Natalie Germanos, Ian Smith, Lydia Greenway, Stacy-Ann King, Sanjay Manjrekar, Sana Mir, WV Raman, Kass Naidoo and Alan Wilkins.

Debbie Hockley: “I have been waiting for this World Cup with great anticipation as has all of New Zealand. The 50-over World Cup is the ultimate tournament in many ways and it’s a matter of great honour for New Zealand to be hosting it for the third time.

“I have wonderful memories of this event, especially lifting the trophy at home in the year 2000. As part of the commentary panel, I am fortunate to be close to the action again and I think we might see history being repeated with the White Ferns coming on top at home!”

Nasser Hussain: “Women’s cricket has made rapid progress in the past few years, and I have been following it very keenly. The world’s best have converged in New Zealand and I’m sure there are lots of thrills in store in the coming weeks.

“I can’t wait to get to the commentary box and watch the spectacle unfold.”

Ian Smith: “Cricket World Cups get the best out of the players, and commentators as well. The Men’s Cricket World Cup three years ago saw a thrilling final that I was privileged to be a part of.

“I’m really looking forward to what promises to be an exciting tournament. I wish all eight teams the very best.”

Lisa Sthalekar: “It’s great to be here for the Women’s Cricket World Cup, which I am sure will be a superb competition with the best on view. The last Cricket World Cup in England and the T20 World Cup in Australia were highly successful tournaments and got more people around the world to follow the women’s game.

“I am sure fans are looking forward to the tournament as are all the players, and I hope they enjoy every moment of it, as World Cups are extremely special.”

Sana Mir: “I have had the honour of leading Pakistan in World Cups and I understand what it means to the players. The ICC championships have given the teams out of the top four nations a great opportunity to prepare better. I look forward to high quality cricket and close encounters.

“I am thrilled to be a part of the commentary team for this mega event and to be working with top professionals.”

ICC’s all-inclusive presentation: ICC TV’s all-inclusive production will allow broadcasters to transmit the matches without the need for a unilateral presentation set-up. In addition to live match coverage, a 30-minute pre-game build-up, an innings interval show and a post-game wrap-up will also be produced by ICC TV.

This will be the most widely distributed women’s cricket event of all time with unprecedented coverage from Star Sports and its Licensees making each match available live on a global basis. In India, Star Sports will have Hindi commentary for all India matches.

In addition, India’s matches against New Zealand, Australia and Bangladesh will also be produced in Tamil, Telugu and Kannada. In New Zealand, all the matches will be live on Sky Sports whilst highlights of all matches will be available on Sky’s Free to Air Channel Prime.

The opening match between New Zealand and the West Indies will also be live on Prime. Meanwhile, in Australia, Fox Sports has announced a dedicated 24/7 channel for the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup. The event will be live for the first time on ESPN+ in the US in addition to Willow’s coverage on TV.

Matches will be shown live across the world courtesy of ICC’s global broadcast partners:

Territory – TV – Digital

India – Star Sports – Disney + Hotstar

Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan – Star Sports – Yupp TV

Bangladesh – Gazi TV – Rabbithole

Pakistan – PTV Sports and Asports – PTV and ARY App

UK and ROI – Sky Sports Cricket – SkyGo and Sky Sports YouTube

Australia – WWC Channel (Fox 507) – Kayo

New Zealand – Sky Sports Cricket – SkyNow and SkyGo

USA – Willow TV – ESPN+

Canada – Willow TV – Hotstar

Caribbean Islands – ESPN – ESPN App

South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa – Supersport – SuperSport app

MENA – CricLife – SwitchTV and StarzPlay

Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong – Astro Cricket (Astro, Singtel and NowTV) – Disney + Hotsar

Hong Kong – Astro Cricket – Now TV

Pacific Islands – TVWAN (Digicel) – Digicel App

South America – ESPN via Star Plus

Europe, SEA, South America and Afghanistan – Yupp TV

Digital content will be made available via the ICC Facebook and Instagram channels, with in-play clips and highlights clips in the Indian subcontinent) and 5-minute highlights (globally). In addition, BBC Sport (UK), ESPNCricinfo, ESPN and ESPN+ (U.S.A) and Spark Sport (NZ) will also provide coverage via short-form in-play and highlights clips.

BBC (UK), Sports Entertainment Network Radio (AUS and NZ) and Prasar Bharati (Hindi coverage via All India Radio) will have running commentaries on their FM channels, while Talk 100.3 FM of the United Arab Emirates will provide regular Hindi updates through the day. Prasar Bharati will additionally broadcast matches on their AM channel, while Digital 2 Sports will broadcast matches globally on their digital platform.

For more information, contact:
Headquarters,
International Cricket Council (ICC)
Street 69, Dubai Sports City,
Sh Mohammed Bin Zayed Road, Dubai, UAE
Phone: +97-143828800
Fax: +97-143828600
E-mail: enquiry@icc-cricket.com
Website: www.icc-cricket.com

Battle for the inaugural Benaud-Qadir Trophy begins Friday 

Rawalpindi, March 03, 2022 (PPI-OT):After 24 years wait, Pakistan and Australia resume Test battle in Pakistan with Babar Azam and Pat Cummins set to lead their sides in the first Test of the three-match Benaud-Qadir ICC World Test Championship series match at the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium from Friday.

Both sides have spent the last two days preparing for the Test at the venue in three-hour long, training, fielding and nets session of great intensity and quality.

Both sides are full of world-class players and proven Test performers that have made their names across formats around the world. For Pakistan Babar Azam, Azhar Ali, Fawad Alam and Mohammad Rizwan are going to shoulder batting responsibilities while Australia possess batters like Steve Smith, David Warner, Usman Khawaja and Marnus Labuschagne.

Shaheen Shah Afridi, Naseem Shah, Nauman Ali and Sajid Khan are going to provide real ammunition to Pakistan’s varied bowling attack while Australia have in their ranks some of the best current bowlers like Cummins, Mitchel Starc, Josh Hazelwood and Nathan Lyon.

The two sides have kept a close eye on the Rawalpindi pitch which has a tradition of being a sporting one, the last Test played at the venue was Pakistan’s 95-run triumph against South Africa almost a year ago.

Since the return of Test cricket in Pakistan in December 2019, this will be the fourth Test at the venue. The 2020 Pakistan-Sri Lanka match ended in a draw.

Both captain are eagerly looking forward to the historic series as they feel the two sides are set to produce quality cricket that will provide rich entertainment to Test cricket fans around the world especially the home crowd that has been starved of quality Test cricket for a long time.

Babar Azam: “It is a huge honour to play this series since the trophy has been named after legends of the game Richie Benaud and Abdul Qadir. As a team we are very excited that Australia are touring after 24 years, we want to make this a memorable series and the entire squad remains focused and determined to deliver the goods.

“Our fans have been a strength of ours in the recent past, they have come to cheer us, shown their love and support through social media and have backed us by watching us on their TV screens. My request would be for them to turn up at the venue and give us full backing and support.

Pat Cummins: “Richie toured here for the first time some 60 years ago, we are proud to be here in Pakistan and can’t wait for the series to start.

“This is a very special occasion as we have a long history of playing against Pakistan back home and never over here, a whole generation of Australian cricketers haven’t had the chance of being over here and play so as a group we feel very privileged and lucky to be here, we have been incredibly looked after and it is beautiful here, we can’t wait for the series to start.”

For more information, contact:
Media Manager,
Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB)
Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore 54600, Pakistan
Tel: +92-42-5717231-4
Fax: +92-42-5711860
Website: www.pcb.com.pk

66% of Pakistanis report that the socially responsible behaviour of companies influences their purchase decision; 83% of the global average hold a similar opinion: Gallup and Gilani Pakistan 

Islamabad, March 03, 2022 (PPI-OT):According to a survey conducted by Gallup and Gilani Pakistan, 66% of Pakistanis report that the socially responsible behaviour of companies influences their purchase decision; 83% of the global average hold a similar opinion.

A nationally representative sample of adult men and women from across the four provinces was asked the following question, “Do socially responsible behaviours of companies/brands influence your purchase decisions?” In response to this question, 32% said very much, 21% said somewhat, 13% said slightly, 10% said not at all, and 24% didn’t know or gave no response.

Question: “Do socially responsible behaviours of companies/brands influence your purchase decisions?”

For more information, contact:
Head Office,
Gallup Pakistan
Islamabad, Pakistan
Tel: +92-51-8445080
Email: isb@gallup.com.pk, caf@gallup.com.pk
Website: www.gallup.com.pk

Zoho Takes on Current Low-Code Market Gaps with New Creator Platform to Empower Businesses to Easily Build, Deploy, Manage, and Analyze Custom Solutions

Bringing in the company’s 15 years of expertise in low code, the new unified development platform empowers both IT teams and business users to build sophisticated, modern, and compliant solutions, for a low-code experience that is secure, easy to use, and custom-fit to solve business challenges

Austin, Texas, March 03, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Today, Zoho Corporation, a leading global technology company, announced the latest version of its low-code offering, Zoho Creator Platform, an all-in-one solution that bridges the gap between business users and IT teams by providing a low-code solution-building experience regardless of technical know-how. Organizations currently face soaring demand for new business software, but existing low-code platforms for business users only facilitate basic app building, lacking the sophistication needed to develop scalable, enterprise-ready end-to-end tools. Existing solutions in the market designed specifically for business users facilitate only basic app building, lacking the complexity needed to develop end-to-end tools, which allow organizations to scale and ensure centralized governance.

Addressing the needs of both business users and IT teams, Zoho Creator Platform supports all levels to build, manage, integrate, and analyze for a complete low-code experience, enabling 10X faster deployment than any other solution on the market. Democratizing access to low-code development tools allows IT and business users to work in tandem to create and deploy apps that are highly customized, while minimizing common interoperability, permissions, and governance challenges.

“Currently there isn’t a low-code solution on the market that allows both business users and IT to truly build end-to-end business solutions,” said Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist, Zoho Corporation. “With this update, Zoho’s Creator Platform combines application development, integrations, process automation, business intelligence and analytics into a single platform while simultaneously enabling IT teams to effortlessly manage security, compliance, and governance challenges. Organizations can now leverage a unified solution for all of their low-code needs, extending the ability to innovate to every employee.”

The Zoho Creator Platform integrates digital data and processes to facilitate the creation of truly agile solutions for business users and IT teams alike. Business developers can now easily build scalable low-code solutions which include apps, integrations, analytics, and process automation without heavy dependency on IT teams or time-consuming training. For IT stakeholders, the Platform now provides deeper controls around governance and management, without compromising automation, data-driven insights, customization, and the ability to affect revenue and growth. Together, business users and IT can quickly deploy secure, dynamic solutions built to auto-scale, so that organizations can focus on solving business problems and pursue new opportunities.

“We needed a complete solution to resolve specific operational difficulties, including a lack of streamlined communication and an inability to oversee employees effectively. The Zoho Creator Platform allowed us to build new contextual tools that unify disjointed communication channels, automate processes, and seamlessly integrate into our existing system,” said Gaurav Kakkar, System Process Manager at Emirates Logistics. “Additionally, the new Platform has given specific administrators greater flexibility in implementing new processes through the sandbox and demo user options to keep our data secure while providing important business insights. Together, we’re able to better support employees to be more productive, enabling them to collaborate and spot opportunities to better serve themselves and customers.”

“With this version of Creator, Zoho is shifting its low-code emphasis from applications to business solutions,” said Jason Bloomberg, President of Intellyx, an industry research firm. “Creator helps business stakeholders and IT personnel collaborate to combine applications, business intelligence and analytics, and process automation into end-to-end business solutions. Creator is simple enough for nontechnical staff while also powerful enough to address complex workflow scenarios in a secure, scalable environment.”

Key areas of innovation in the new Creator Platform include:

Expand App Building to Solution Building

Unified Solution Builder – Create, integrate, analyze, and manage custom business solutions at scale from a single dashboard. Seamlessly switch between different elements, with deep interoperability between capabilities, and in-built guardrails for IT teams to drive enterprise-wide citizen development programs.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) – Zoho’s intelligent AI assistant (Zia) now enables developers to import data from anywhere, cleanse and transform with one click, build data models, and automatically detect data relationships via Smart Import. AI tasks such as predictive analytics, keyword extraction, sentiment analysis, OCR, and object detection are built into the drag-and-drop user interface for easy deployment.

Process Blueprinting – This intuitive drag-and-drop builder graphically constructs an online replica of a business process by specifying each step, assigning responsibilities across stakeholders, and automating actions based on pre-set conditions. Users can now identify bottlenecks and have clarity to facilitate scalability for evolving business needs.

Enhanced Serverless Functions – Developers can now write, store, and execute reusable code blocks in Zoho Creator Platform using Deluge, Java, or Node.js. These functions encourage IT and business teams to work together to build scalable and easily maintainable enterprise-ready apps faster.

Build a Connected Ecosystem of Solutions for a Seamless Experience

Unified Data Modeling (UDM) – Unchecked data points, varied data formats, and evolving app landscapes add layers of difficult-to-solve complexities to data integration, resulting in sub-optimal business results. Universal cloud modeling is now included to help developers establish secure data transfer by automating data integration protocols with unified data architecture and over 600 plug-and-play connectors to make data integration easier for users.

Integration Status Dashboard – Users have complete visibility on how well each integration operates with the new Integration Status Dashboard. Status Dashboard provides key findings on recent executions, success and failure stats, and top connections facilitating early error detection and resolution to enable organizations to discover errors and resolve them quicker.

Embedded BI and Analytics Engine – An industry-first, full-fledged business intelligence and analytics engine is now included in the Zoho Creator Platform, enabling users to derive business insights from the data residing in their applications without worrying about bringing another subscription into the fold. High-end BI functionalities like predictive analytics, data alerts, what-if analysis, data blending, and conversational analytics are all now supported on the low-code platform.

Increased Control for IT with End-to-End ADLM

Environments – Developers can now launch solutions in different environments of choice—development, staging (testing), or production—with a single click based on the readiness of the solution. This allows users to add features continuously or make changes without disturbing the existing app in production. The environments also support role-based access to help business developers simulate user-specific experience validation.

Centralized Governance – To help IT manage low-code development, features such as granular role-based access controls, comprehensive audit trails and backup options, application IDE, dashboards to view and manage users, billing dashboard, personalization options such as localization, branding customization, and more, are now available in the low-code platform.

Integrated Communication and Collaboration Aid – Often, business developers get stuck in the build phase with minor obstacles, especially when new to the platform. In order to enhance communication and collaboration, integrated communication enables messaging, sending files, sharing screens, and the ability to make audio and video calls.

Zoho Creator Platform Pricing 

Pricing starts at $25 USD per employee, with a 15-day trial available. For comprehensive pricing information, please visit: https://www.zoho.com/creator/pricing.html

Zoho Privacy Pledge

Zoho respects user privacy and does not have an ad-revenue model in any part of its business, including its free products. More than 75 million users around the world, across hundreds of thousands of companies, rely on Zoho every day to run their businesses, including Zoho itself. For more information, please visit: https://www.zoho.com/privacy-commitment.html

About Zoho

With 50+ apps in nearly every major business category, including sales, marketing, customer support, accounting and back-office operations, and an array of productivity and collaboration tools, Zoho Corporation is one of the world’s most prolific technology companies.

Zoho is privately held and profitable with more than 10,000 employees. Zoho is headquartered in Austin, Texas, with international headquarters in Chennai, India. Additional offices are in the United States, India, Japan, China, Canada, Singapore, Mexico, Australia, the Netherlands, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. For more information, please visit: www.zoho.com/

Attachments

Sandra Lo
Zoho Corporation 
slo@zohocorp.com

Carol Tong
PR for Zoho
carol@caroltongconsulting.com

UVAS Wildlife and Ecology Department observes World Wildlife Day at Ravi Campus 

Lahore, March 03, 2022 (PPI-OT):The Department of Wildlife and Ecology of the University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (UVAS) Lahore observed World Wildlife Day with the theme of ‘recovering key species for ecosystem restoration’. Various activities including an awareness walk, seminar and informative lectures were arranged to create awareness about wild fauna and flora among students and the general public.

Chairman Department of Wildlife and Ecology Dr Arshad Javid led the walk while Manager Conservation WWF-Pakistan Ms Humera Ayesha, Director Remote Sensing Geographical Information System (GIS) and Climatic Research Lab Punjab University Dr Zia-ul-Haq, Team Leader National Center of GIS and Space Applications Punjab University Dr Asim Daud Rana and a number of professionals, faculty members and students participated.

In the seminar Dr Asim Daud Rana spoke about the role of remote sensing in ecosystem restoration while Ms Humera Ayesha delivered a lecture on recovering key species for ecosystem restoration. At the end of seminar Dr Arshad Javid presented the vote of thanks.

For more information, contact:
Public Relations Officer
University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (UVAS)
Syed Abdul Qadir Jillani (Out Fall) Road,
Lahore – Pakistan
Tel: +92-42-99211374, +92-42-99211449
Email: webmaster@uvas.edu.pk
Website: www.uvas.edu.pk