Sri Lanka beats the Bangladeshi side to preserve their World Cup campaign alive

Women's Cricket World Cup, Mumbai

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

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

Sri Lanka emerge victorious by seven runs margin

Sri Lanka secured four crucial dismissals in the last innings segment to achieve a heart-stopping victory over their opponents and preserve their faint chances of making it for the World Cup semi-finals intact.

Pursuing a modest score of 203 on a good batting surface in the Mumbai stadium, Bangladesh wanted nine runs from the final six bowls.

Yet, Lankan skipper Athapaththu secured three wickets in four deliveries and Nilakshi de Silva dismissed via run-out Nahida to achieve a exciting win for Sri Lanka.

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

Bangladesh, however, endured a fifth successive defeat since securing victory in their tournament opener against the Pakistani team and have been knocked out.

Although the Bangladeshi side got off to the perfect start, with Marufa Akter taking a wicket with the first delivery of the encounter to remove Vishmi Gunaratne, they were appropriately penalized for a disappointing fielding display.

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

While the Sri Lankan skipper was unable to make it count, sent back leg before wicket for 46 just one delivery after being dropped by Rabeya, Hasini Perera made the opposition regret it.

She achieved a maiden international half-century, accumulating 85 from 99 bowls and sharing an crucial 74-run fifth-wicket collaboration with Nilakshi de Silva.

The Bangladeshi team, led by Shorna's impressive bowling figures, dragged themselves back in the game, with De Silva's dismissal in the 34th bowling segment initiating a Sri Lanka collapse from 174 for four to 202 total.

During their chase, the Lankan team's starting bowlers Madara and Prabodhani contained the opposition to 23 for one in a disappointing initial phase and they were afterwards diminished to 44 with three wickets lost.

Sharmin Akter and Joty rebuilt their innings, adding 82 runs for the fourth wicket before Sharmin withdrew due to injury for a resolute 64 in the 36th bowling phase.

It was in favor of Bangladesh approaching the final two innings segments, with only 12 more runs necessary.

Nevertheless, Dasanayaka dismissed Ritu and allowed just three scoring runs before the captain's chaos, with Rabeya Khan, Nahida, skipper Joty and Marufa all dismissed as Sri Lanka grabbed the triumph at the final moment.

Ultimately, it was a match of composure. The highly experienced Lankan captain, who ushered away a handful of team-mates as she got ready to deliver the final over, maintained her composure. Bangladesh did not.

There will be plenty of questions about Bangladesh's batting performance. They could easily have been pursuing around 270-280 with Sri Lanka appearing comfortable on 159 for four in the 30th over, but in contrast the chase was significantly less.

However, Bangladesh showed little purpose from the start, scoring at below 2.5 runs per over during the powerplay, suffering a early batting collapse, and eventually forcing themselves overwhelming to do.

But no matter what difficulties there are with their batting lineup, if they had seized their chances in the fielding area, that 203-run target target would have been substantially lower.

It required them three tries to break the 72-run partnership second-wicket, with keeper Joty not managing to hold a challenging catch behind the stumps to dismiss Hasini Perera on 23 before Athapaththu survived from a return catch opportunity against Rabeya Khan.

Perera was dropped once more on 55 and 63 runs, the last attempt flying straight to Rubya Haider Jhilik at cover position, before ultimately being dismissed leg before wicket by Shorna as she tried to increase the tempo with partners falling around her.

Subsequently in the innings, there was also a stumping chance missed and a missed run-out, even though the second one was a little regrettable, with Rubya Haider substituting with the wicketkeeping gloves following an physical problem to Joty.

Sadly for Bangladesh, such fielding woes are not at all a single occurrence. They've dropped 14 catches from a available 27 opportunities at this tournament and display the worst catching success rate (48.1 percent) of the participating teams.

They are a team who are overall moving in the correct path – they are competing in just their second ODI World Cup ultimately – but poor fielding is a obvious issue which requires improvement.