For the first time, Cuba was left out of the top ten countries in the world ranking issued by the World Baseball and Softball Confederation (WBSC), which was updated on Monday.
The list, which includes a global range of 84 countries and territories, is released one month after the start of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
“No. 11 Cuba came out of the top 10 for the first time since the Baseball World Rankings was launched in 2009,” the WBSC stated in its Web page.
Starting in 2012, it has been gradually declining from first place to third in 2014, then to fifth in 2016 and then to eighth in 2019.
“Cuba falls 4 positions and remains in 11th place in the @WBSC Ranking released today, the worst location since this ranking was established,” lamented the station Radio Bayamo on your Facebook wall.
Also in the weekly Havana Tribune, the reporter Boris Luis Cabrera analyzed the causes of this “free fall” of the Cuban national sport, which for the first time did not qualify in an Olympics.
“Since these lists began to be published, Cuba was at the top of all nations for its results in all baseball categories and its players walked with pride through all the fields of this world,” he recalled.
Cabrera explained that the WBSC world ranking measures the results of national teams from the children’s categories to the professional in international competitions for four years.
“Falling to 11th place on that list calls for urgent reflection, a rethinking of the methods and strategies that currently govern baseball in our country and above all, a radical change in the way this sport is directed and organized. throughout the entire island, “he demanded.
The Cuban baseball team is now in Willemstad, Curaçao, where the III Caribbean Cup is taking place, which was dedicated to Higinio Vélez, president of the Cuban federation of the discipline who died of coronavirus last May.
The most recent international competition for the national team was the Baseball Pre-Olympic Tournament, which was held in Miami, and in which the Cubans did not pass the first phase and They ran out of options to fight for the ticket to the Olympics.
In March 2020, Cuba rose to seventh place in the WBSC ranking, after his performance in the U-23 World Cup Qualifier earned him several points and made him rise from eighth place, where he had been on the list for January of that year.
In that month’s update the Isla fell three places -from fifth to eight-, after a 2019 with the worst results in international events in the history of this sport.
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