JAMAICA and England will embark on the first game of the Supreme Ventures Limited-sponsored three-Test netball series today at the National Indoor Sports Centre.

The encounter is scheduled to begin at 5:00 pm, an hour after the Opening Ceremony for the series.

The teams, perennial challengers for the third-placed world ranking behind the powerful pair of Australia and New Zealand, are using this contest to prepare for the World Netball Championship in Australia later this year.

The last time Jamaica hosted England in a Test series, the latter swept to a resounding 3-0 victory in the spring of 2013.

The teams met in a one-off encounter in January 2014 and hosts England were again the victors.

The Sunshine Girls avenged those defeats at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland, by pushing aside England in the clash for the bronze medal.

Some renewed optimism arrived with the Commonwealth Games performance, but Jamaica’s head coach Minneth Reynolds knows that consistency has been a missing ingredient.

And the Sunshine Girls will have to prove they can consistently beat England both home and away before they can be seen as credible contenders to break the top-two stranglehold.

“A lot is expected of us this series and I know the public and our sponsors expect nothing less than a win,” Reynolds said during the squad presentation ceremony at the Courtleigh Hotel on Wednesday.

“This [series] really gives us, as coaches, a feedback as to where we are in terms of our preparation; where our strengths and weaknesses lie. So it is a very important series for us because we are really using it as a benchmark to judge our player readiness, and what it is that we need to do in order to get us better prepared for the World Championship.”

Colette Thomson, the England assistant coach, is expecting a tight contest. She also noted the importance of getting the right formula ahead of the marquee tournament later this year.

“We’re obviously looking forward to it because the competition between Jamaica and England, for years, has been hotly-contested and we’ve been working hard with our squads and this is important preparation for the World Cup in August. We’re confident in the group we brought here,” she told the Jamaica Observer.

Thomson added that her team has been working on ways to blunt the Jamaican shooters, while at the same time, to find channels in which they can flourish in attack.

“Obviously they’ve got strength and height in the shooting circle in both Romelda [Aiken] and Jhaniele Fowler, so we’ve got to prevent them from getting too many opportunities. We’ll be looking to close out their attack and actually make it difficult for them to get the ball into the circle. Defensively they’re very athletic, so we’ve been working hard on how we can take the ball through the court cleanly and get it to our shooters,” she said.

Neither team is at full strength for this series.

England’s centre court player Serena Guthrie is injured and did not make the trip. For Jamaica, promising defender Malysha Kelly is being rested due to a niggling knee ailment.

Romelda Aiken, one of Jamaica’s best goal shooters, could be asked to step in to fill the defensive void. The towering player, who plies her trade in the ANZ Championship, has enjoyed success in defence in recent times.

The second encounter of the series is set for tomorrow before the series ends on Tuesday. Those games are also slated for the Indoor Centre.