Harare — Zimbabwe senior women's netball team found the going tough at the just ended World Championships Qualifiers held in Pretoria, South Africa, as they failed to qualify for the finals.

Africa will send three countries for the World Championships in the Cook Islands. Six countries - Lesotho, Namibia, Botswana, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and South Africa - took part in the event that started on Monday and ended yesterday. The tournament was supposed to end on Sunday but ended yesterday since some of the expected countries did not turn up.

Eight countries were originally scheduled to participate in the event but Swaziland did not travel while Uganda arrived after the tournament had started. Zimbabwe walked away with a bronze medal after they finished in third position but this could not earn them a ticket to the World Championships.

South Africa scooped the gold medal while Botswana won the silver medal and both countries qualified for the World Championships and will join Malawi who had already qualified by the virtue of being the best team in Africa. Out of the five matches they played, Zimbabwe won three. They lost their opening match 29-64 to South Africa on Monday.

In their second game Zimbabwe beat Lesotho 58-24 before they went down to Botswana 42-33. They beat Namibia 42-33 on Wednesday and yesterday they beat Tanzania 40-27. Speaking from South Africa, Zimbabwe Netball Association president, Leticia Chipandu said the competition was high but expressed disappointment in the way the fixtures were organised during the tournament.

"We were suppose to play Tanzania in the opening match but it was changed at the last minute and we had to play South Africa. "There was no need to change the fixture when Tanzania were already there. "The same thing happened in the next game. I think it was a deliberate move to defend South Africa and Botswana. "The attitude is that we (Zimbabwe) have not been participating for the past 15 years and people really do not think that we can compete at a higher level and can play anyone. "Our player Joyce Ngwarai was the shooter of the tournament with 87,48 percent accuracy," said Chipandu.