Wednesday 7th November: England are top seeds for the WSF Women’s World Team Championships in Nîmes, France (November 12-17).)
The quartet of Laura Massaro (World No. 3),Alison Waters (World No. 4), Jenny Duncalf (World No. 6), and Sarah Kippax (world No. 21) are attempting to win for England for a seventh time.
Runners-up to Australia (Palmerston, NZ, 2010) and Eqypt (Cairo, 2008), England’s ladies have to break the spell of ‘seconditis’ if they are to emulate the countries last success in the Championship when beating Egypt in Edmonton, Canada in 2006.
Only Australia has won more championships than England and with a record 25 nations competing in Nîmes, and the eyes of the IOC focused on squash in its bid for Olympic status for 2020, all teams participating in the tournament will play at least once on the three all glass show courts.
The ladies are in good form, with Laura Massaro coming into the event with an important recent success over Egypt’s Raneem El Weleily in New York in September and followed up as a semi-finalist in the US Open just 3 weeks ago in Philadelphia, whilst Duncalf and Waters made the Quarter-finals in the same event.
The top eight seeds are:
1. England
2. Egypt
3. Malaysia
4. Hong Kong, China
5. New Zealand
6. Australia
7. Ireland
8. Netherlands