The Lankan team overcomes the Bangladeshi side to keep their World Cup campaign breathing
The Lankan team will face Pakistan in their must-win final tournament match
ICC Women's World Cup, Mumbai
The Lankan team 202 (48.4 overs): Hasini Perera 85 (99); Shorna Akter 3-27
Bangladesh 195-9 (50 overs): Joty 77 (98); Chamari Athapaththu 4-42
The Lankan side win by seven runs margin
Sri Lanka claimed four wickets in the decisive over to seal a heart-stopping win over their opponents and preserve their narrow hopes of qualifying for the World Cup semi-finals ongoing.
Pursuing a below-par total of 203 on a batting-friendly pitch in the Mumbai stadium, Bangladesh needed nine additional runs from the remaining six bowls.
However, Sri Lanka captain Chamari Athapaththu secured three wickets in four balls and de Silva ran out Nahida to secure a thrilling victory for the Lankan team.
The triumph – the Lankan team's first of the competition after three defeats and two no-results against the Australian team and the Kiwi side – moves them level on four tournament points with the Indian team and the New Zealand side, who meet each other on the coming Thursday.
Bangladesh, in contrast, experienced a fifth consecutive setback since winning their first match against Pakistan and have been eliminated.
Although the Bangladeshi side made the excellent commencement, with Marufa Akter striking with the initial ball of the encounter to send back Gunaratne, they were deservedly made to pay for a subpar fielding effort.
They gifted second chances to Perera, who was missed multiple times, and Athapaththu.
Although Athapaththu failed to take advantage, sent back lbw for 46 a single bowl after being put down by Rabeya Khan, Perera forced the opposition regret it.
She achieved a first international 50-run score, scoring 85 from 99 balls and sharing an crucial 74-run partnership fifth-wicket collaboration with De Silva.
Bangladesh, guided by Shorna's impressive bowling figures, fought themselves back in the contest, with De Silva's removal in the 34th bowling segment causing a Sri Lanka downfall from 174 for four to 202 complete.
While batting second, the Lankan team's starting bowlers Madara and Udeshika Prabodhani restricted Bangladesh to 23 with one wicket down in a uninspiring powerplay and they were afterwards brought down to 44-3.
Sharmin Akter and Nigar Sultana Joty reconstructed their innings, putting on 82 runs for the fourth wicket collaboration before the batter retired hurt for a stubborn 64 in the 36th bowling phase.
It was advantage Bangladesh approaching the final two innings segments, with just 12 more runs required.
Yet, Sugandika Dasanayaka sent back Ritu and gave away only three scoring runs before Athapaththu's decisive intervention, with Rabeya Khan, Nahida Akter, skipper Joty and Marufa all removed as the Lankan team grabbed the victory at the very end.
The Bangladeshi team are unable to maintain composure - and catches
Finally, it was a match of composure. The highly experienced Lankan captain, who ushered away a few of team-mates as she set herself to bowl the last over, kept her nerve. Bangladesh failed to.
There will be numerous questions about Bangladesh's batting effort. They possibly have been needing 270 to 280 with the Lankan team seeming comfortable on 159 for four in the 30th over, but instead the required total was significantly less.
Nevertheless, the batting side lacked intent from the very beginning, making runs at less than 2.5 runs each over during the opening overs, experiencing a top-order collapse, and ultimately forcing themselves overwhelming to achieve.
But whatever difficulties there are with their batting, if they had accepted their catches in the fielding department, that 203-run target target would have been considerably lower.
It took them three efforts to break the 72-run partnership second-wicket association, with wicketkeeper Joty failing to take a difficult catch while keeping to remove Hasini Perera on 23 runs before the captain was spared from a caught and bowled chance chance against Rabeya Khan.
The batter was missed further on 55 runs and her score of 63, the last attempt traveling straight to Jhilik at cover field, before ultimately being dismissed lbw by Shorna as she tried to increase the tempo with partners being dismissed beside her.
Later in the game, there was also a stumping chance missed and a run-out opportunity lost, even though the second one was a somewhat unfortunate, with Jhilik standing in with the wicketkeeping gloves due to an physical problem to Joty.
Regrettably for Bangladesh, such fielding woes are nowhere near a isolated incident. They've dropped 14 chances from a available 27 chances at this competition and display the poorest catching success rate (48.1 percent) of the participating teams.
They are a squad who are typically heading in the proper way – they are playing in merely their second one-day World Cup ultimately – but poor fielding performance is a glaring concern which needs attention.
