Sri Lanka beats Bangladesh to maintain their World Cup campaign ongoing

ICC Women's World Cup, Navi Mumbai

Sri Lanka 202 (48.4 overs): Hasini Perera 85 (99); Shorna 3-27

The Bangladeshi team 195-9 (50 overs): Joty 77 (98); Chamari Athapaththu 4-42

The Lankan side emerge victorious by seven runs margin

The Lankan cricket team claimed four crucial dismissals in the last innings segment to seal a heart-stopping victory over Bangladesh and maintain their slim chances of qualifying for the World Cup semi-finals alive.

Pursuing a modest score of 203 on a good batting surface in Navi Mumbai, the Bangladeshi team required nine runs from the last six deliveries.

Yet, Sri Lanka captain Chamari Athapaththu claimed three crucial wickets in four balls and Nilakshi de Silva dismissed via run-out Nahida to achieve a exciting success for the Lankan team.

The win – the Lankan team's first of the tournament after three unsuccessful matches and two no-results against Australia and the Kiwi side – pushes them equal on four points with India and New Zealand, who confront each other on Thursday.

The Bangladeshi team, in contrast, experienced a fifth straight setback since securing victory in their initial game against Pakistan and have been eliminated.

While the Bangladeshi side got off to the excellent commencement, with Marufa striking with the initial ball of the match to remove Gunaratne, they were deservedly punished for a poor fielding performance.

They provided lifelines to Hasini Perera, who was dropped three times, and Athapaththu.

While the Sri Lankan skipper could not capitalise, sent back leg before wicket for 46 just one delivery after being dropped by Rabeya, Hasini Perera made the opposition suffer.

She registered a maiden international 50-run score, making 85 from 99 bowls and contributing to an significant 74-run fifth-wicket association with Nilakshi de Silva.

The Bangladeshi team, spearheaded by Shorna's three wickets for 27 runs, pulled themselves back into the match, with Nilakshi's wicket in the 34th over triggering a Lankan downfall from 174-4 to 202 total.

While batting second, the Lankan team's starting bowlers Malki Madara and Udeshika Prabodhani contained the opposition to 23 for one in a uninspiring powerplay and they were subsequently brought down to 44-3.

Sharmin and Joty rebuilt their innings, contributing 82 runs for the fourth wicket before the batter left the field injured for a determined 64 in the 36th innings segment.

It was advantage the chasing team heading into the remaining two overs, with just 12 runs required.

Yet, Sugandika Dasanayaka removed Ritu and allowed only three scoring runs before the captain's chaos, with Rabeya, Nahida, skipper Joty and Marufa Akter all removed as Sri Lanka seized the victory at the very end.

Finally, it was a game of nerves. The highly experienced Lankan captain, who directed away a handful of teammates as she got ready to deliver the final over, kept her composure. The opposition could not.

There will be many inquiries about the team's batting display. They might well have been pursuing 270 or 280 with the Lankan team seeming settled on 159 for four in the 30th innings segment, but in contrast the chase was considerably smaller.

However, the batting side showed little intent from ball one, scoring at below 2.5 runs each over during the opening overs, undergoing a early batting collapse, and finally forcing themselves overwhelming to accomplish.

But no matter what difficulties there are with their batting, if they had taken their chances in the field, that 203 total objective would have been considerably lower.

It needed them three tries to break the 72-run partnership second-wicket, with keeper Nigar Sultana not managing to grab a challenging catch as wicketkeeper to send back Hasini Perera on 23 runs before Athapaththu got a reprieve from a caught and bowled chance chance against Rabeya Khan.

Perera was missed again on her score of 55 and 63, the latter chance traveling right to Jhilik at cover, before eventually being dismissed lbw by Shorna Akter as she sought to up the ante with batting partners getting out near her.

Subsequently in the innings, there was furthermore a stumping chance missed and a missed run-out, although the latter was a little regrettable, with Rubya Haider substituting with the wicketkeeping gloves following an physical problem to Joty.

Unfortunately for the team, such fielding problems are not at all a isolated incident. They've failed to catch 14 catches from a possible 27 chances at this tournament and boast the worst catching success rate (48.1%) of the participating teams.

They are a squad who are typically progressing in the proper way – they are competing in only their second 50-over World Cup after all – but substandard fielding performance is a glaring problem which needs focus.