Sri Lanka ready for World Netball Championships in South Africa

The Sri Lanka Junior Athletics Team

By Susil Premalal

The Netball World Championship for 2023, conducted by the International Netball Federation (INF) will be held from July 28 to August 8 in Cape Town, South Africa.   
The INF finalised the dates of the tournament last week, although the venue had been selected much earlier.   

A total of 16 teams will participate in this tournament with the host nation and the top five World Ranked teams securing an automatic place for the showpiece event.   
The remaining ten places will be filled via the five regional tournaments with two teams qualifying from each.   

Australia (1), New Zealand (2) Jamaica (3), England (4), South Africa (5) and Uganda (6) are the top nations in the World Rankings.   

Sri Lanka and Singapore (Asia), Tonga and Fiji (Oceania), Malawi and Zimbabwe (Africa), Scotland and Wales (Europe) have also qualified from their respective regions while the American regional event will be held from October 16 to 21 in Jamaica.   

Sri Lanka had to be content with the 16th place out of 15 countries at the previous World Netball Championships held in 2019 in Liverpool, England.   

However, the reigning Asian Champions are yet to begin their preparations for this tournament but according to reliable sources from the Sri Lanka Netball Federation, they are likely to start training in January 2023.