Vusumuzi Dube
Innocent Kurira , Sports Reporter
THE Zimbabwe senior national netball team will today get an idea of their state of preparedness for the 2023 World Cup when they face England in a friendly game in Cape Town, South Africa.
This will be the first of their four warm-up matches which will see Zimbabwe also taking on Barbados, Scotland and Wales. Gems’ coach Ropafadzo Mutsauki believes the warm-up matches will be crucial.
“We have settled in well. We will conduct our first training session today (yesterday) after a busy day on Friday when we were doing the media programmes.
We are excited and looking forward to the friendly matches starting with England. These will help us assess the team and see areas we need to work on. We are hopeful of improving from our last World Cup performance,” said Mutsauki.
England who play Zimbabwe in their first friendly have played in all Netball World Cup competitions since 1963.
They hosted the last edition, in 2019 in Liverpool, where they took the bronze medal.
This was the Roses’ sixth third-place finish, while they won silver once at the 1975 edition. Their worst finish in the competition is fourth, which they last achieved in 2007. Ranked 13 in the world, Zimbabwe was drawn in Pool A with the world’s number one side Australia, Fiji ranked 19, and Tonga, who are ranked seventh in the preliminary stage.
Their first game is against Australia on 28 July then Fiji the following day and they play Tonga last on 30 July. The Gems received US$72 000 sponsorship that will also cater for allowances from Nedbank Zimbabwe last Tuesday. — @innocentskizoe
Bongani Ndlovu