Malawi Queens battle for top 6 in the world -Lwazi

On of the shinning stars for Malawi Queens, Takondwa Lwazi, was on her best on Monday when she inspired her team to been Northern Ireland 47-43 in the Group F Netball World Cup in Liverpool  and clinched the Player of the Match Award.

The dimunitive centre player  was delighted to bag  her first accolade at the tournament in the match and told Sky Sport TV that the objective of the Malawi Queens is to go all the way as the team, which has been relegated to position nine on International Netball Federation (INF) rankings, so that they can squeeze in top six .

Malawi  went in the tournament ranked ninth,  but the Queens were as high as sixth earlier this year.

“It was a tough game but we tried our best. We tried our best to play our ball and our system. In the second quarter we did what the coach told us to do.

“We know that they will not be easy games [coming up] but we will try our best to break into the top six or even the top four in the world,” Lwazi said on Sky Sports after the match.

INF has introduced a complex format for the Netball World Cup.

In the new format, teams have to be at their best as they battle out in four round robin stages.

This is in contrast with the 2015 tournament format which although it had three stages, the preliminary stage was not subdivided into a further two stages.

The top three teams in each group will progress to the preliminaries stage two where the top three teams from groups A and B will form group F, and the top three teams from groups C and D will form Group G.

The bottom four finishers from groups A to D will compete for 13th to16th places in Group E.

In the second stage, Malawi’s Queens are now in Group F which has six teams—Group A winners Australia, Group B winners New Zealand, Barbados who finished third in Group B, Zimbabwe and Northern Ireland.

The winners and runners up will proceed into play-offs and the others play the same position from Group G in a placement match.

The second round of the preliminaries stage will be played from today to July 18 while the play-offs and placings will be played from July 19 to 21.

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