The Namibian senior women’s netball team, the Debmarine Desert Jewels, saw their dream of qualifying for the 2023 Netball World Cup slip out of their hands after a 41-45 defeat against Zimbabwe on Tuesday.
Namibia, who are in Pool A alongside host South Africa, Tanzania, Botswana and Zimbabwe, have now lost two matches at the Africa Netball World Cup qualifiers underway at the University of Pretoria (Tuks) Rembrandt Hall.
On Monday night, Namibia lost to South Africa in their second match at the championship while Zimbabwe handed them their second defeat Tuesday afternoon in an encounter that saw the Namibian team giving it their all in the last quarter of the match.
The opening quarter of the match saw Zimbabwe take a four-point lead in the first three minutes. After conceding four points early in the match, the Namibian players did not make things easier for themselves as they missed numerous turnover opportunities that would have brought them back into the match.
The first quarter ended 8-12 in favour of Zimbabwe.
The second quarter saw the Debmarine Desert Jewels once again making too many unforced errors and wrong passing as they could not handle their opponent’s physical game.
The missed opportunities on the turnovers caused Namibia points in a quarter where they only managed to score six points compared to their opponents who used up most of their opportunities to score 11 points.
That quarter ended 14-23 for Zimbabwe.
In the third quarter of the match, Zimbabwe added another 13 points to their score line compared to Namibia who struggled to keep up with the tempo of their opponents and scored 10 points, which at the time was their highest score from all three quarters.
The quarter ended 24-36 for Zimbabwe.
The final quarter saw Team Namibia pull out their whole arsenal but it was too late to make an impact. Namibia dominated the fourth quarter of the game and scored 17 points in this quarter, restricting their opponents to just nine points but still ended up losing the game with the four-point margin of 41-45.
Namibia’s last match of the group stages will be against Botswana on Wednesday at 12h00.
Source: The Namibian Press Agency
