The Lankan team overcomes Bangladesh to maintain their campaign breathing

Women's Cricket World Cup, Navi Mumbai

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

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

The Lankan side win by seven runs

Sri Lanka secured four crucial dismissals in the final over to complete a thrilling win over Bangladesh and preserve their narrow hopes of qualifying for the World Cup semi-finals ongoing.

Chasing a below-par target of 203 on a favorable wicket in the Mumbai stadium, the Bangladeshi team needed nine runs from the last six bowls.

Nevertheless, Lankan skipper Athapaththu took three crucial wickets in four balls and Nilakshi de Silva dismissed via run-out Nahida to achieve a exciting win for Sri Lanka.

The triumph – Sri Lanka's first of the tournament after three losses and two washed-out matches against the Australian team and New Zealand – elevates them equal on four tournament points with India and New Zealand, who meet each other on the coming Thursday.

Bangladesh, in contrast, endured a fifth consecutive defeat since securing victory in their initial game against the Pakistani team and have been removed from contention.

Although Bangladesh made the excellent commencement, with Marufa Akter taking a wicket with the initial ball of the encounter to send back Gunaratne, they were rightfully made to pay for a disappointing fielding performance.

They provided lifelines to Hasini Perera, who was dropped multiple times, and Athapaththu.

While the Sri Lankan skipper was unable to capitalise, removed lbw for 46 a single bowl after being missed by Rabeya, Perera made Bangladesh regret it.

She registered a debut international fifty, making 85 from 99 balls and contributing to an significant 74-run fifth-wicket association with De Silva.

The Bangladeshi team, guided by Shorna Akter's three wickets for 27 runs, fought themselves back in the match, with Nilakshi's wicket in the 34th bowling segment triggering a Sri Lanka collapse from 174-4 to 202 all out.

During their chase, the Lankan team's opening bowlers Madara and Prabodhani restricted Bangladesh to 23 for one in a disappointing powerplay and they were later reduced to 44 with three wickets lost.

Sharmin and Joty reconstructed their batting effort, contributing 82 for the fourth wicket collaboration before Sharmin retired hurt for a determined 64 in the 36th over.

It was leaning toward the chasing team heading into the last two innings segments, with only 12 runs necessary.

However, Sugandika Dasanayaka sent back Ritu Moni and gave away merely three runs before the captain's chaos, with Rabeya Khan, Nahida Akter, captain Joty and Marufa all removed as Sri Lanka seized the victory at the death.

In the end, it was a game of nerves. The highly experienced Lankan captain, who ushered away a few of teammates as she prepared to bowl the last over, maintained hers. The opposition failed to.

There will be many questions about the team's batting performance. They might well have been pursuing around 270-280 with Sri Lanka appearing comfortable on 159 with four wickets down in the 30th over, but rather the target was much lower.

However, the batting side showed little purpose from the start, making runs at under 2.5 runs each over during the opening overs, experiencing a early batting collapse, and ultimately forcing themselves overwhelming to do.

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

It required them three tries to terminate the 72-run second-wicket, with wicketkeeper Nigar Sultana not managing to grab a challenging catch as wicketkeeper to send back Perera on her score of 23 before the captain survived from a caught and bowled chance chance against Rabeya.

The batter was dropped again on 55 and 63 runs, the latter chance going straight to Jhilik at cover field, before eventually being trapped lbw by Shorna Akter as she sought to up the ante with teammates being dismissed around her.

Later in the batting effort, there was furthermore a missed stumping and a missed run-out, although the run-out chance was a little unfortunate, with Jhilik substituting with the wicketkeeping gloves after an injury to Joty.

Regrettably for the team, such fielding woes are nowhere near a isolated incident. They've dropped 14 chances from a available 27 chances at this World Cup and have the worst catch efficiency (48.1 percent) of the competing sides.

They are a team who are overall heading in the proper way – they are competing in only their second ODI World Cup after all – but poor fielding is a obvious problem which demands improvement.