Botswana suffered an embarrassing whip at the just ended hockey indoor Africa cup held in Durban, South Africa.
With both the men and women national teams participating at the tournament, they returned home after conceding an avalanche of goals without response in all matches played at the extravaganza.
Three nations, which included hosts South Africa and Namibia, played at the tournament with the winners booking a place to the Federation of International Hockey (FIH) 2022 indoor World cup slated for Belgium. It was a mountain to climb for 79th ranked Botswana playing against the African heavyweights with Namibia ranked 9th and South Africa ranked 14th in the world rankings. In their opener match, the men’s team suffered a 27 nil defeat to Namibia and later walloped heavily by South Africa with a 37 nil thumping.
The demise continued in the women’s arena witnessing a 26 nil defeat at the hands of hosts South Africa and 36 nil loss to Namibia. Following big losses in their openers, day two of the championship didn’t help for the locals to redeem as they suffered losses again despite reduced goal margin from their counterparts. The team lost 20 nil to Namibia and 18 nil to South Africa.
Meanwhile, South Africa men’s team emerged champions and qualified for the indoor hockey World cup in a tightly contested match defeating rivals Namibia 4-1 in the final. However, the Namibians turned tables as the women’s representatives at the world cup for Africa will be Namibia after brushing aside South Africa two nil in the final. In what was seen as a shocker, Namibia reversed two loses from South Africa suffered in the two matches played ahead of the finals which they lost 1-2 and 0-4 ahead of the final.
