Softball technical director stands by decision

Calistus Kolantsho | Monday February 13, 2023 16:00

The games were stopped before the much anticipated grand finale between Botswana and South Africa was played. Maonge told Sport Monitor that it was a tough tournament scheduled for four days, double round robin, from there going to page system. He said the information was cascaded to team managers on the format that was going to be played. “The format was agreed during our technical meetings. It was a tough tournament with the weather. In softball rules, if we have major disruption such as rain, we sit down to decide if a match can proceed or not. We agreed that if we play a single round robin and the weather does not permit us, we have a qualifier because we will have positions one, two and three,” he said.

Maonge explained that if they completed double round robin, the results of the double round robin will be the results of the qualifiers. If they could not finish page system, its results could not be considered. He said if the page system was finished, it was going to be the results of the games scheduled for four days and it was going to be the results of the African senior women qualifiers. When asked why countries were surprised that the tournament ended prematurely, Maonge said as tournament director, he spoke to team managers and teams might be surprised due to the message that was cascaded down to the teams. “For me everything was transparent. I spoke to managers when there were changes. It was a consensuses that was reached and we never had problems,” he said.



Maonge said double round robin was completed with South Africa placed first, Botswana placed second, Kenya placed third and Lesotho in the fourth position. Botswana and South Africa have qualified to go to Spain and Ireland but still have to qualify for the World Cup. South Africa will go to Spain and Botswana in Ireland. Maonge said WBSC has already determined where each country will play. He said he was impressed about how the tournament went but of course he needed more to be done. He said if it was according to him, without rain, they could have played more games.

He said his wish is for African countries to play more games against each other, instead of waiting for two years for qualifiers. Maonge said competition is always between Botswana and South Africa and that is not Africa. “When I learnt that eight countries were coming, I said, we have arrived but our countries have financial crises. That was going to give the players an opportunity to play wide range of games. But unfortunately only four countries took part in the qualifiers,” Maonge said.