The Lankan team beats Bangladesh to maintain their World Cup tournament hopes breathing

ICC Women's World Cup, Navi Mumbai

Sri Lanka 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 emerge victorious by seven runs

The Lankan cricket team secured four crucial dismissals in the final over to seal a heart-stopping victory over Bangladesh and maintain their narrow aspirations of qualifying for the tournament knockout stage ongoing.

Pursuing a modest target of 203 on a good batting surface in the Mumbai stadium, Bangladesh required nine more runs from the last six balls.

However, Lankan skipper Athapaththu secured three important dismissals in four balls and Nilakshi de Silva dismissed via run-out Nahida Akter to bring about a dramatic victory for the Lankan team.

The victory – Sri Lanka's maiden of the competition after three losses and two no-results against Australia and the Kiwi side – moves them tied on four match points with the Indian team and the New Zealand side, who meet each other on Thursday.

The Bangladeshi team, on the other hand, suffered a fifth straight defeat since winning their initial game against the Pakistani team and have been eliminated.

Although the Bangladeshi side made the ideal beginning, with Marufa Akter taking a wicket with the first delivery of the encounter to remove Gunaratne, they were appropriately made to pay for a poor fielding display.

They gifted second chances to Hasini Perera, who was spilled multiple times, and the Lankan captain.

Even though the Sri Lankan skipper could not take advantage, dismissed lbw for 46 just one delivery after being missed by Rabeya, Perera made Bangladesh regret it.

She scored a first international fifty, accumulating 85 from 99 bowls and sharing an crucial 74-run stand fifth-wicket collaboration with Nilakshi de Silva.

Bangladesh, spearheaded by Shorna's impressive bowling figures, fought themselves back into the game, with Nilakshi's removal in the 34th bowling segment causing a Sri Lanka batting collapse from 174 for four to 202 all out.

During their chase, Sri Lanka's opening bowlers Madara and Prabodhani contained Bangladesh to 23-1 in a disappointing opening overs and they were afterwards brought down to 44 for three.

Sharmin and Joty rebuilt their score, putting on 82 for the fourth wicket before Sharmin withdrew due to injury for a resolute 64 in the 36th bowling phase.

It was leaning toward the chasing team approaching the last two bowling phases, with only 12 more runs required.

However, Dasanayaka dismissed Ritu and allowed just three scoring runs before Athapaththu's chaos, with Rabeya Khan, Nahida Akter, captain Joty and Marufa Akter all dismissed as Sri Lanka grabbed the victory at the very end.

In the end, it was a contest of nerve. The seasoned Lankan captain, who moved aside a few of fellow players as she set herself to deliver the final over, held hers. The opposition did not.

There will be many questions about the team's batting performance. They possibly have been needing 270 to 280 with Sri Lanka seeming at ease on 159 for four in the 30th innings segment, but instead the chase was considerably smaller.

However, Bangladesh displayed insufficient aggression from ball one, making runs at less than 2.5 runs each over during the initial phase, suffering a early batting collapse, and eventually forcing themselves overwhelming to do.

But whatever difficulties there are with their batting approach, if they had accepted their chances in the fielding department, that 203-run target would have been substantially less.

It took them three attempts to terminate the 72-run partnership second-wicket, with keeper Nigar Sultana not managing to grab a challenging chance while keeping to dismiss Perera on 23 runs before Athapaththu got a reprieve from a caught and bowled chance chance against Rabeya.

Perera was dropped once more on 55 and her score of 63, the last attempt flying directly to Jhilik at cover, before ultimately being given out lbw by Shorna Akter as she tried to up the ante with teammates getting out around her.

Subsequently in the game, there was furthermore a failed stumping and a failed run-out, although the latter was a little unfortunate, with Jhilik standing in with the wicketkeeping gloves due to an physical problem to Joty.

Sadly for the team, such fielding problems are not at all a single occurrence. They've missed 14 chances from a potential 27 chances at this tournament and have the worst catching success rate (48.1 percent) of the competing sides.

They are a team who are overall progressing in the right direction – they are playing in only their second ODI World Cup ultimately – but substandard fielding is a obvious issue which needs attention.