The Lankan team beats Bangladesh to maintain their tournament hopes alive

ICC Women's World Cup, Navi Mumbai

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

Bangladesh 195-9 (50 overs): Nigar Sultana Joty 77 (98); Athapaththu 4-42

The Lankan side win by seven runs

The Lankan cricket team secured four crucial dismissals in the decisive over to complete a thrilling triumph over their opponents and maintain their faint chances of qualifying for the World Cup semi-finals ongoing.

Pursuing a attainable target of 203 on a batting-friendly pitch in Navi Mumbai, Bangladesh required nine runs from the last six deliveries.

Yet, Lankan skipper Chamari Athapaththu claimed three wickets in four bowls and de Silva dismissed via run-out Nahida Akter to achieve a dramatic win for Sri Lanka.

The victory – the Lankan team's initial of the World Cup after three losses and two washed-out matches against the Australian team and New Zealand – pushes them tied on four points with India and New Zealand, who confront each other on the coming Thursday.

The Bangladeshi team, on the other hand, suffered a fifth successive loss since winning their initial game against Pakistan and have been removed from contention.

Although the Bangladeshi side made the perfect start, with Marufa Akter striking with the initial ball of the encounter to remove Vishmi Gunaratne, they were rightfully made to pay for a disappointing fielding performance.

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

Although Athapaththu could not make it count, dismissed lbw for 46 just one delivery after being put down by Rabeya, Hasini Perera made Bangladesh regret it.

She scored a debut international 50-run score, accumulating 85 from 99 balls and sharing an important 74-run fifth-wicket with Nilakshi de Silva.

The Bangladeshi team, led by Shorna Akter's impressive bowling figures, pulled themselves back to the contest, with Nilakshi's wicket in the 34th over causing a Lankan batting collapse from 174 with four wickets down to 202 all out.

During their chase, Sri Lanka's opening bowlers Malki Madara and Prabodhani limited the opposition to 23-1 in a disappointing opening overs and they were later diminished to 44-3.

Sharmin and Nigar Sultana Joty restored their innings, putting on 82 runs for the fourth wicket stand before Sharmin retired hurt for a resolute 64 in the 36th over.

It was advantage the chasing team heading into the last two bowling phases, with just 12 additional runs necessary.

Nevertheless, Dasanayaka sent back Ritu Moni and gave away only three scoring runs before the captain's dramatic spell, with Rabeya Khan, Nahida Akter, skipper Joty and Marufa Akter all sent back as the Lankan team grabbed the win at the final moment.

Ultimately, it was a game of nerves. The very experienced Athapaththu, who ushered away a few of teammates as she prepared to deliver the decisive over, held her composure. The opposition failed to.

There will be numerous doubts about Bangladesh's batting performance. They possibly have been needing around 270-280 with Sri Lanka looking comfortable on 159 for four in the 30th innings segment, but rather the required total was significantly less.

However, Bangladesh displayed insufficient aggression from the start, scoring at under 2.5 runs each over during the opening overs, suffering a top-order collapse, and eventually making themselves overwhelming to achieve.

But whatever difficulties there are with their batting approach, if they had taken their chances in the fielding area, that 203 total objective would have been considerably smaller.

It needed them three attempts to end the 72-run stand second-wicket collaboration, with keeper Joty failing to grab a challenging opportunity behind the stumps to remove Hasini Perera on her score of 23 before the captain survived from a caught and bowled chance chance against Rabeya.

Perera was spilled further on 55 runs and 63, the last attempt traveling straight to Jhilik at cover position, before ultimately being given out lbw by Shorna Akter as she attempted to increase the tempo with batting partners getting out around her.

Afterwards in the batting effort, there was furthermore a missed stumping and a failed run-out, while the second one was a little unfortunate, with Rubya Haider standing in with the wicketkeeping gloves after an injury to Joty.

Unfortunately for the team, such fielding woes are nowhere near a single occurrence. They've missed 14 chances from a available 27 at this tournament and have the worst catching success rate (48.1 percent) of the eight teams.

They are a team who are overall moving in the proper way – they are playing in only their second ODI World Cup in the end – but substandard fielding performance is a obvious issue which requires attention.