Sri Lanka beats Bangladesh to maintain their campaign alive

Women's Cricket World Cup, Mumbai

The Lankan team 202 (48.4 overs): Perera 85 (99); Shorna 3-27

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

Sri Lanka win by seven runs margin

The Lankan cricket team took four wickets in the final innings segment to seal a nail-biting victory over Bangladesh and preserve their faint aspirations of making it for the World Cup semi-finals intact.

Pursuing a modest target of 203 on a favorable wicket in the Mumbai stadium, the Bangladeshi team required nine runs from the final six deliveries.

Yet, Sri Lanka captain Athapaththu took three important dismissals in four bowls and de Silva ran out Nahida Akter to achieve a thrilling success for the Lankan team.

The triumph – the Lankan team's maiden of the competition after three losses and two no-results against Australia and the Kiwi side – moves them level on four tournament points with India and New Zealand, who meet each other on the coming Thursday.

The Bangladeshi team, on the other hand, experienced a fifth consecutive loss since securing victory in their tournament opener against the Pakistani team and have been eliminated.

Even though Bangladesh got off to the perfect start, with Marufa Akter taking a wicket with the initial ball of the game to dismiss Vishmi Gunaratne, they were deservedly penalized for a poor fielding display.

They provided lifelines to Perera, who was spilled multiple times, and Athapaththu.

While Athapaththu failed to make it count, sent back lbw for 46 one ball after being missed by Rabeya, Hasini Perera forced Bangladesh suffer.

She achieved a debut international 50-run score, scoring 85 from 99 deliveries and sharing an significant 74-run partnership fifth-wicket association with Nilakshi de Silva.

The Bangladeshi team, spearheaded by Shorna's three wickets for 27 runs, pulled themselves back in the game, with De Silva's wicket in the 34th over triggering a Lankan collapse from 174-4 to 202 all out.

In reply, Sri Lanka's initial pace attack Malki Madara and Udeshika Prabodhani restricted Bangladesh to 23 for one in a lacklustre initial phase and they were subsequently reduced to 44 for three.

Sharmin Akter and Nigar Sultana Joty restored their score, putting on 82 for the fourth wicket before Sharmin left the field injured for a stubborn 64 in the 36th over.

It was leaning toward Bangladesh approaching the remaining two overs, with only 12 more runs required.

However, Sugandika Dasanayaka dismissed Ritu Moni and gave away only three scoring runs before the captain's decisive intervention, with Rabeya Khan, Nahida, skipper Joty and Marufa all removed as Sri Lanka snatched the victory at the final moment.

Ultimately, it was a match of composure. The very experienced Athapaththu, who ushered away a several of fellow players as she got ready to bowl the decisive over, kept hers. The opposition did not.

There will be plenty of doubts about Bangladesh's batting effort. They possibly have been needing 270 to 280 with Sri Lanka seeming settled on 159 with four wickets down in the 30th innings segment, but rather the target was much lower.

Yet, Bangladesh showed little aggression from ball one, scoring at under 2.5 scoring rate during the powerplay, suffering a top-order collapse, and finally making themselves too much to accomplish.

But whatever issues there are with their batting approach, if they had seized their chances in the fielding area, that 203-run target target would have been significantly smaller.

It needed them three attempts to end the 72-run partnership second-wicket, with keeper Nigar Sultana failing to grab a difficult opportunity while keeping to remove Perera on 23 runs before the captain got a reprieve from a caught and bowled chance opportunity against Rabeya.

Perera was dropped once more on 55 and 63, the last attempt flying right to Jhilik at cover field, before ultimately being given out leg before wicket by Shorna as she sought to up the ante with teammates being dismissed near her.

Subsequently in the batting effort, there was also a failed stumping and a missed run-out, although the latter was a little regrettable, with Jhilik standing in with the gloves due to an fitness issue to Joty.

Regrettably for the team, such fielding issues are not at all a single occurrence. They've missed 14 catches from a possible 27 opportunities at this tournament and boast the worst catching success rate (48.1 percent) of the participating teams.

They are a squad who are overall heading in the proper way – they are playing in just their second ODI World Cup ultimately – but inadequate fielding performance is a prominent issue which needs improvement.