Malawi National Netball Team, the Queens, have—due to inactivity—unsurprisingly stagnated on the latest world ranking, a revised ranking table indicates.
The Queens, who lost their world’s fifth position last year to rivals South Africa, remain sixth in the world out of 34 teams and second from a list of seven ranked teams in Africa.
Malawi, whose coach Peace Chawinga Kalua’s contract expired in May, last played competitively at a World Cup in New Zealand last November. Netball Association of Malawi attributes the inactivity to lack of funds.
Spar Proteas of South Africa are the continent’s number one team, International Netball Federation (INF) website indicates.
INF has updated its rankings to reflect matches played during Netball Europe in May and a test match between Wales and South Africa in June. The rankings are revised every January 1 and July 1.
“Following this activity, there is no change to the ranking for the top- ten teams. However, Australia now stretch their lead at the top of the rankings to 20 points,” reads www.inf.org.
“Further down the rankings, Uganda swaps places with Barbados, going to 11 from 13. This is a significant move, as the qualification for Commonwealth Games Gold Coast 2018 will be decided next year, with only the top-12 ranked teams qualifying for entry.”
Also swapping places are Zambia (now 16) and Singapore (17). However, the biggest movement in the rankings is St Lucia, moving down six places from 18 to 24.”
Three countries–Bermuda, Namibia and Thailand – have lost their ranking, having not played eight matches in the past three years.
A further three–Maldives, Pakistan and Tanzania–have lost their rating through not having played any matches at all during the past three years.
Ranking table
1 Australia
2 New Zealand
3 England
4 Jamaica
5 South Africa
6 Malawi
7 Fiji
8 Wales
9 Trinidad & Tobago
10 Scotland
11 Uganda
12 Northern Ireland
13 Barbados
14 Samoa
15 Papua New Guinea
16 Zambia
17 Singapore
18 Canada
19 Botswana
20 Zimbabwe
21 Grenada
22 Malaysia
23 Cook Islands
24 St Lucia
25 Ireland
26 Hong Kong
27 Sri Lanka
28 USA
29 Swaziland
30 Gibraltar
31 Malta
32 Switzerland
33 Chinese Taipei
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