UNIT­ED KING­DOM –Ja­maica’s Sun­shine Girls have climbed to num­ber three in the World Net­ball World Rank­ings fol­low­ing their sil­ver medal-win­ning per­for­mance at the re­cent 2022 Com­mon­wealth Games in Birm­ing­ham.

World Net­ball (WN) up­dat­ed the rank­ings on Mon­day, con­firm­ing Ja­maica among five more teams that will be in­vit­ed to com­pete at the Net­ball World Cup 2023 to be held in Cape Town, South Africa from Ju­ly 28 to Au­gust 6, 2023, based on their rank­ing po­si­tion.

Since the last WN World Rank­ings up­date pub­lished on March 1, 2022, sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al test se­ries and events have tak­en place, and WN not­ed that Ja­maica’s rank­ing has im­proved by one po­si­tion.

“With­in the top six teams, Ja­maica has moved up to third in the world, whilst Eng­land has dropped to fourth. This comes af­ter Ja­maica made his­to­ry at the Birm­ing­ham 2022 Com­mon­wealth Games mak­ing their first fi­nal and win­ning a sil­ver medal,” it said.

T&T who lost four of its five match­es at the Com­mon­wealth Games is now ranked 11 among the 41 play­ing na­tions that are list­ed on the rank­ings. T&T went in­to the Games ranked 10th.

This means that Aus­tralia (1st), New Zealand (2nd), Ja­maica (3rd), and Eng­land (4th) will be in­vit­ed to com­pete in next year’s World Cup. Ugan­da (6th) will al­so be in­vit­ed. They have al­so qual­i­fied through their world rank­ing due to South Africa (5th) pre-qual­i­fy­ing as hosts.

A to­tal of 16 teams will com­pete at the event.

While Ja­maica moved up the rank­ings, Trinidad and To­ba­go and Bar­ba­dos slipped down the ta­ble. The twin-is­land re­pub­lic is now one place down at 11th while Bar­ba­dos fell two places to 14th.

Here are the full list of Caribbean and Amer­i­c­as Net­ball teams:

Ja­maica 3

Trinidad & To­ba­go 11

Bar­ba­dos 14

Grena­da 20

St Vin­cent & Grenadines 21

St Lu­cia 22

An­tigua & Bar­bu­da 30

Cay­man Is­lands 32

USA 37

Do­mini­ca 38

St Kitts & Nevis 41

St Maarten 41

Ar­genti­na 41

Oth­er un­ranked net­ball na­tions in the Caribbean and AmeAn­guil­la, Ba­hamas, Guyana, Turks & Caicos Is­lands, Bermu­da, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Guade­loupe, BVI, USVI, Aru­ba, Bonaire, Chile, Cu­ba, Cu­ra­cao, Haiti, Paraguay, Pe­ru, Sa­ba, St Eu­sta­tius, Uruguay and Venezuela. (CMC)