Six­teen (16) of the top teams in the world of net­ball gath­ered this evening at the Artscape The­atre Cen­tre, Fore­shore, Cape Town on Wednes­day, to mark the be­gin­ning of the sport’s pin­na­cle event, the qua­dren­ni­al Net­ball World Cup.

The Can­dle Light­ing Cer­e­mo­ny, which dates back to the first of­fi­cial net­ball world cham­pi­onship, held in East­bourne, Eng­land, in 1963, gath­ers play­ers to light can­dles in a sym­bol of friend­ship and good­will, com­mit­ting to ho­n­our the spir­it of the game.

Led off by Dame Liz Nicholl DBE, fresh­ly re-elect­ed as pres­i­dent of World Net­ball at Con­gress at the West­in Cape Town, the 16 team cap­tains fol­lowed this now 60-year-old tra­di­tion with the teams an­nounced in al­pha­bet­i­cal or­der.

The much-re­spect­ed Can­dle Light­ing Cer­e­mo­ny is a sa­cred tra­di­tion of the Net­ball World Cup. It gives play­ers and of­fi­cials the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ho­n­our the his­to­ry, the present and the fu­ture of the sport be­fore they take to the court to com­pete for the ul­ti­mate prize—the World Cup.

The cer­e­mo­ny has be­come a sym­bol for in­ter­na­tion­al net­ball, cel­e­brat­ing the world­wide im­pact of the sport.

The Net­ball World Cup has been host­ed in Eng­land, Aus­tralia, Ja­maica, New Zealand, T&T, Scot­land, and Sin­ga­pore but nev­er in an African coun­try.

In an in­ter­view with NWC2023 host broad­cast­er, Su­per­Sport af­ter her ar­rival in Cape Town for the tour­na­ment Nicholl said: “We’ve been across four oth­er con­ti­nents of our net­ball world in pre­vi­ous World Cups and on every oc­ca­sion the Net­ball World Cup is quite unique in char­ac­ter, so every­one is look­ing for­ward to see­ing and feel­ing the African char­ac­ter through­out this Net­ball World Cup this week.”

NWC2023 gets un­der way in Cape Town on Fri­day, with T&T "Ca­lyp­so Girls" open­ing ver­sus the reign­ing cham­pi­on New Zealand in the first match of the tour­na­ment at the Cape Town In­ter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion Cen­tre (CTICC) on Court one, start­ing at 3 pm (T&T time).