Malaysian netball is good enough to compete at world level, but standard is way below the top nationsNovember 14th, 2007
Malaysia qualified for the netball world championships on merit for the first time when we finished 2nd to Singapore in the 2005 Asian Netball Championships. Singapore won that match 53-39.
The 2007 Netball World Championships, the 12th world championships was held 10th-17th November in New Zealand. There were 16 competing nations.
Top nations in world netball are New Zealand and Australia. Ever since the first world championships were held in 1963, only these 2 nations have ever been world champions.
In the 2007 edition, Malaysia were in the same pool as Barbados, England and South Africa.
In the first match, we lost to the 5th ranked South Africans 28-67.
In the 2nd match, we lost to 4th ranked England 16-99, in a score more resembling a severely lopsided basketball match. It’s the greatest points difference at a world championships since New Zealand’s walloping of the Cook Islands 107-17 back in 2003.
Last match was against 7th ranked Barbados, and we lost again 38-62. Barbados had already lost their matches against England and South Africa.
To see how far we are behind the top nations, consider this: in the other pool, Singapore lost to 8th ranked Fiji 32-61, then they also managed to lose to the Cook Islands 43-45.