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

ICC Women's World Cup, Navi Mumbai

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

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

The Lankan side win by seven runs margin

Sri Lanka secured four wickets in the last innings segment to achieve a nail-biting victory over Bangladesh and preserve their slim hopes of making it for the World Cup semi-finals ongoing.

Needing a attainable score of 203 on a favorable wicket in the Mumbai stadium, the Bangladeshi team wanted nine additional runs from the last six deliveries.

Yet, Lankan skipper Athapaththu secured three wickets in four bowls and Nilakshi de Silva ran out Nahida Akter to achieve a exciting success for the Lankan team.

The win – Sri Lanka's initial of the competition after three unsuccessful matches and two washed-out matches against the Australian team and New Zealand – moves them tied on four tournament points with India and the New Zealand side, who face each other on Thursday.

Bangladesh, however, suffered a fifth successive loss since securing victory in their initial game against the Pakistani team and have been knocked out.

Even though Bangladesh got off to the ideal beginning, with Marufa taking a wicket with the initial ball of the match to dismiss Vishmi Gunaratne, they were appropriately penalized for a poor fielding performance.

They offered lifelines to Hasini Perera, who was dropped on three occasions, and Athapaththu.

Even though the Sri Lankan skipper failed to make it count, sent back leg before wicket for 46 a single bowl after being missed by Rabeya, Perera made the opposition suffer.

She registered a first international 50-run score, accumulating 85 from 99 balls and sharing an crucial 74-run fifth-wicket collaboration with De Silva.

Bangladesh, led by Shorna's three wickets for 27 runs, dragged themselves back in the match, with De Silva's wicket in the 34th over initiating a Sri Lanka batting collapse from 174 for four to 202 complete.

While batting second, Sri Lanka's opening bowlers Madara and Prabodhani contained the opposition to 23 with one wicket down in a lacklustre powerplay and they were subsequently brought down to 44-3.

Sharmin Akter and Nigar Sultana Joty rebuilt their batting effort, contributing 82 runs for the fourth wicket before Sharmin left the field injured for a resolute 64 in the 36th bowling phase.

It was advantage the chasing team heading into the remaining two innings segments, with only 12 runs necessary.

Nevertheless, Sugandika Dasanayaka dismissed Ritu Moni and allowed merely three scoring runs before the captain's decisive intervention, with Rabeya Khan, Nahida, captain Joty and Marufa all sent back as the Lankan team grabbed the win at the very end.

In the end, it was a game of nerve. The highly experienced Athapaththu, who ushered away a handful of team-mates as she set herself to deliver the decisive over, held hers. The opposition could not.

There will be numerous questions about the team's batting display. They might well have been needing around 270-280 with Sri Lanka looking comfortable on 159 with four wickets down in the 30th innings segment, but in contrast the chase was much lower.

However, the batting side showed little purpose from the start, accumulating runs at less than 2.5 runs per over during the opening overs, experiencing a early batting collapse, and eventually forcing themselves excessive to achieve.

But no matter what issues there are with their batting, if they had seized their opportunities in the fielding department, that 203-run target would have been significantly lower.

It required them three attempts to break the 72-run second-wicket collaboration, with wicketkeeper Joty failing to take a tough opportunity as wicketkeeper to remove Hasini Perera on 23 before the captain was spared from a caught and bowled chance possibility against Rabeya.

The batter was spilled again on 55 and her score of 63, the last attempt flying directly to Rubya Haider Jhilik at cover, before finally being dismissed lbw by Shorna as she sought to increase the tempo with batting partners being dismissed near her.

Afterwards in the innings, there was additionally a failed stumping and a missed run-out, while the second one was a somewhat unfortunate, with Jhilik deputising with the keeping duties after an fitness issue to Joty.

Regrettably for Bangladesh, such fielding problems are not at all a one-off. They've missed 14 opportunities from a available 27 chances at this competition and have the worst catching success rate (48.1%) of the participating teams.

They are a squad who are generally progressing in the correct path – they are playing in just their second 50-over World Cup ultimately – but substandard fielding is a obvious concern which requires focus.