End of the road for Dinaledi
Calistus Kolantsho | Saturday August 27, 2022 06:00
Dinaledi won two and lost as many games to finish with four points in Pool A that had hosts South Africa (SA), Zimbabwe, Tanzania, and Namibia.
The side picked a convincing victory 54-45 against Tanzania in their last match yesterday, but that was not enough as Botswana suffered defeats against SA and Zimbabwe.
In the first match, SA walloped Botswana 60-37 before Dinaledi lost 49-41 to Zimbabwe. The girls squeezed a 45-43 victory against Namibia on Wednesday. The competition was used as the Africa Cup of Nations and Africa World Cup qualifiers. Only two teams qualify for the World Cup joining the already qualified SA and Uganda. SA was playing the Africa Cup while Uganda pulled out. Botswana Netball Association (BONA) spokesperson, Mokeresete Mokeresete told Mmegi Sport that from Pool A, two top teams, being SA and Zimbabwe will proceed to the semifinals.
“The winner will play the final, if South Africa wins it means we will be left with one team that has not qualified. The team that plays the final has qualified for the World Cup. The last two will compete for position three and four, and the one that gets position three also qualifies for the World Cup,” he said.
Mokeresete said Botswana has accepted the situation that they are out. He said will be in the play-offs to fight for position five and six against Kenya. Meanwhile, Mokeresete said they went to Pretoria to qualify for the World Cup and anything other than qualifying means they did not achieve their objective. “We are hurt that we failed to achieve our objective.
Apart from that, we are happy about the performance of our players. For the first time we managed to win a quarter against South Africa,” he said. He added the team has improved a lot since the arrival of Jenny van Dyk. He said only if she had more time with the team would they have been talking of different results.