Battle at the Netball World Cup

The Silver Ferns have led to Australia may push no more indepth to the country’s most…

The move paid off late in the quarter, with her fresh legs (and always fresh arm) proving too much for Malawi, who looked exhausted by the very prospect of competing with this flawless specimen of a human.

The 99-Test veteran settled the attacking third, the Silver Ferns outscoring Malawi 15-10 to seal a slightly flattering win.

Alexander shuffled her midcourt and defence to start the second half with Kim Ravaillion given a well-deserved spell, Renae Hallinan taking over the centre bib and captain Laura Geitz coming onto the court at goal keeper.

The Silver Ferns lacked energy and accuracy and were staring down the barrell of their first ever defeat at Allphones Arena, before a string of uncharacteristic errors hampered Malawi’s progress in the final quarter. She was voted the best netballer in the world in 2014 and will feature in her fourth championship and is one of six players aged over 30. Expect war to break out in the stands by Friday afternoon.

The 22-year-old Hadley again proved what a force she will be in the future with immaculate movement and some pin-point circle feeds to goal attack Erin Bell and shooter Caitlin Thwaites.

The Proteas coach, Norma Plummer, was the Australian Diamonds’ coach when they won the previous World Cup in Singapore in 2011. Malawi play and unorthodox style and can be a tricky side to get past because they are so hard to get ball off. They’re quite happy to play the ball around amongst themselves for a couple of minutes if that’s how long it takes to get the it into the shooter’s hands. She had an equal game-high seven intercepts along with five deflections and grabbed eight rebounds.

Meanwhile, Australia had a thumping 66-31 victory over South Africa.

Tomorrow Australia takes a well-deserved rest day, which they will spend eating grapes peeled for them by their legions of fans. “That’s not been the mentality of me or my family throughout our careers”.