Sri Lanka defeats the Bangladeshi side to preserve their World Cup tournament hopes ongoing

ICC Women's World Cup, Navi Mumbai

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

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

Sri Lanka emerge victorious by seven runs

The Lankan cricket team took four crucial dismissals in the decisive over to seal a heart-stopping victory over their opponents and preserve their faint chances of making it for the World Cup semi-finals intact.

Pursuing a below-par total of 203 on a favorable wicket in Navi Mumbai, the Bangladeshi team required nine additional runs from the last six bowls.

However, Sri Lanka captain Athapaththu took three crucial wickets in four bowls and Nilakshi de Silva dismissed via run-out Nahida to secure a dramatic success for the Lankan team.

The triumph – Sri Lanka's first of the competition after three unsuccessful matches and two abandoned games against Australia and the Kiwi side – moves them level on four points with India and New Zealand, who meet each other on the coming Thursday.

The Bangladeshi team, however, endured a fifth consecutive defeat since winning their tournament opener against the Pakistani team and have been eliminated.

Although Bangladesh made the ideal beginning, with Marufa striking with the first delivery of the encounter to remove Vishmi Gunaratne, they were appropriately made to pay for a poor fielding display.

They gifted second chances to Perera, who was dropped on three occasions, and Athapaththu.

Even though the Sri Lankan skipper could not make it count, sent back lbw for 46 one ball after being dropped by Rabeya, Hasini Perera made Bangladesh pay.

She registered a maiden international half-century, making 85 from 99 balls and building an crucial 74-run partnership fifth-wicket collaboration with De Silva.

Bangladesh, spearheaded by Shorna Akter's impressive bowling figures, pulled themselves back into the contest, with De Silva's dismissal in the 34th over triggering a Lankan batting collapse from 174 with four wickets down to 202 total.

While batting second, the Lankan team's starting bowlers Madara and Prabodhani contained Bangladesh to 23 with one wicket down in a uninspiring powerplay and they were later reduced to 44 with three wickets lost.

Sharmin and Joty restored their batting effort, contributing an 82-run partnership for the fourth wicket stand before Sharmin left the field injured for a resolute 64 in the 36th bowling phase.

It was advantage the chasing team approaching the last two innings segments, with merely 12 additional runs required.

Nevertheless, Dasanayaka sent back Ritu and conceded just three scoring runs before the captain's chaos, with Rabeya, Nahida, captain Joty and Marufa all dismissed as Sri Lanka snatched the win at the death.

Ultimately, it was a contest of composure. The seasoned Lankan captain, who ushered away a handful of team-mates as she set herself to deliver the decisive over, maintained hers. The opposition failed to.

There will be many inquiries about Bangladesh's batting display. They possibly have been pursuing around 270-280 with the Lankan team looking at ease on 159 for four in the 30th bowling phase, but instead the chase was significantly less.

However, the batting side displayed insufficient aggression from ball one, making runs at less than 2.5 runs each over during the powerplay, suffering a early batting collapse, and finally leaving themselves too much to accomplish.

But no matter what issues there are with their batting approach, if they had taken their opportunities in the fielding department, that 203 total objective would have been considerably lower.

It took them three tries to end the 72-run partnership second-wicket, with keeper Joty being unable to take a tough opportunity behind the stumps to remove Hasini Perera on 23 runs before Athapaththu was spared from a caught and bowled opportunity against Rabeya.

Perera was spilled again on her score of 55 and 63 runs, the latter chance flying directly to Jhilik at cover, before eventually being dismissed lbw by Shorna Akter as she attempted to up the ante with batting partners getting out near her.

Later in the game, there was also a failed stumping and a run-out opportunity lost, while the second one was a slightly unfortunate, with Rubya Haider standing in with the keeping duties due to an injury to Joty.

Regrettably for the team, such fielding problems are nowhere near a single occurrence. They've failed to catch 14 catches from a available 27 at this tournament and have the worst fielding effectiveness (48.1 percent) of the participating teams.

They are a side who are overall moving in the right direction – they are participating in only their second ODI World Cup ultimately – but poor fielding is a obvious concern which demands improvement.