The Lankan team defeats the Bangladeshi side to keep their World Cup tournament hopes ongoing

Women's Cricket World Cup, Navi Mumbai

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

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

The Lankan side win by seven runs

The Lankan cricket team secured four wickets in the decisive innings segment to achieve a heart-stopping triumph over Bangladesh and keep their faint chances of making it for the World Cup semi-finals alive.

Pursuing a modest target of 203 on a favorable wicket in Navi Mumbai, Bangladesh needed nine more runs from the final six bowls.

Nevertheless, Sri Lanka captain Athapaththu claimed three wickets in four bowls and Nilakshi de Silva ran out Nahida to achieve a thrilling win for the Lankan team.

The victory – Sri Lanka's first of the competition after three defeats and two no-results against Australia and the Kiwi side – pushes them equal on four tournament points with the Indian team and New Zealand, who confront each other on Thursday.

The Bangladeshi team, on the other hand, experienced a fifth straight loss since winning their tournament opener against the Pakistani team and have been knocked out.

While the Bangladeshi side got off to the excellent commencement, with Marufa striking with the first delivery of the game to remove Gunaratne, they were deservedly made to pay for a subpar fielding display.

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

Although the Sri Lankan skipper could not capitalise, sent back leg before wicket for 46 just one delivery after being missed by Rabeya Khan, Perera made Bangladesh pay.

She scored a maiden international fifty, scoring 85 from 99 deliveries and sharing an important 74-run partnership fifth-wicket association with Nilakshi de Silva.

The Bangladeshi team, led by Shorna Akter's impressive bowling figures, pulled themselves back to the contest, with De Silva's removal in the 34th innings segment triggering a Sri Lanka downfall from 174 for four to 202 total.

In reply, Sri Lanka's starting bowlers Madara and Prabodhani contained the opposition to 23-1 in a disappointing powerplay and they were afterwards reduced to 44 for three.

Sharmin and Nigar Sultana Joty reconstructed their batting effort, contributing 82 for the fourth wicket before the batter retired hurt for a determined 64 in the 36th bowling phase.

It was leaning toward the chasing team entering the remaining two innings segments, with just 12 additional runs required.

Nevertheless, Sugandika Dasanayaka dismissed Ritu and allowed just three scoring runs before the captain's decisive intervention, with Rabeya Khan, Nahida Akter, captain Joty and Marufa Akter all dismissed as the Lankan team seized the win at the death.

Finally, it was a game of nerves. The very experienced Lankan captain, who directed away a handful of fellow players as she prepared to bowl the decisive over, kept her nerve. The opposition failed to.

There will be plenty of questions about Bangladesh's batting effort. They could easily have been chasing 270 or 280 with the Lankan team appearing settled on 159-4 in the 30th over, but rather the chase was considerably smaller.

However, Bangladesh showed little aggression from the start, accumulating runs at less than 2.5 runs per over during the powerplay, suffering a early batting collapse, and eventually forcing themselves excessive to do.

But no matter what problems there are with their batting approach, if they had seized their chances in the field, that 203-run target would have been substantially smaller.

It required them three attempts to end the 72-run partnership second-wicket, with keeper Joty failing to hold a tough catch behind the stumps to remove Perera on 23 runs before Athapaththu got a reprieve from a return catch possibility against Rabeya.

The batter was missed again on her score of 55 and 63, the last attempt traveling straight to Jhilik at cover position, before finally being dismissed lbw by Shorna as she attempted to accelerate the scoring with partners falling near her.

Later in the game, there was additionally a failed stumping and a missed run-out, although the second one was a slightly unfortunate, with Jhilik standing in with the keeping duties due to an physical problem to the regular keeper.

Sadly for Bangladesh, such fielding woes are far from a isolated incident. They've dropped 14 catches from a available 27 opportunities at this tournament and have the worst catching success rate (less than 50%) of the competing sides.

They are a squad who are typically moving in the correct path – they are participating in merely their second one-day World Cup ultimately – but inadequate fielding is a obvious concern which needs improvement.