The Lankan team overcomes the Bangladeshi side to keep their tournament hopes breathing

Women's Cricket World Cup, Mumbai

The Lankan team 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

The Lankan cricket team secured four wickets in the last innings segment to seal a heart-stopping victory over their opponents and preserve their slim hopes of making it for the World Cup semi-finals alive.

Needing a attainable target of 203 on a favorable wicket in the Mumbai stadium, the Bangladeshi team needed nine runs from the final six deliveries.

Yet, Lankan skipper Chamari Athapaththu secured three wickets in four deliveries and Nilakshi de Silva ran out Nahida to achieve a dramatic success for Sri Lanka.

The win – the Lankan team's maiden of the competition after three unsuccessful matches and two washed-out matches against Australia and the Kiwi side – pushes them level on four match points with the Indian team and the New Zealand side, who face each other on the coming Thursday.

Bangladesh, on the other hand, experienced a fifth successive loss since winning their tournament opener against the Pakistani team and have been eliminated.

Even though Bangladesh got off to the excellent commencement, with Marufa Akter taking a wicket with the opening bowl of the encounter to send back Vishmi Gunaratne, they were appropriately made to pay for a subpar fielding effort.

They gifted second chances to Hasini Perera, who was spilled on three occasions, and the Lankan captain.

Even though Athapaththu was unable to take advantage, removed lbw for 46 a single bowl after being missed by Rabeya Khan, Hasini Perera forced Bangladesh suffer.

She achieved a debut international 50-run score, making 85 from 99 balls and sharing an significant 74-run fifth-wicket association with De Silva.

The Bangladeshi team, guided by Shorna's three wickets for 27 runs, dragged themselves back into the contest, with Nilakshi's wicket in the 34th innings segment initiating a Lankan downfall from 174 with four wickets down to 202 total.

In reply, Sri Lanka's initial pace attack Madara and Udeshika Prabodhani limited the opposition to 23 for one in a lacklustre opening overs and they were afterwards brought down to 44-3.

Sharmin Akter and Joty reconstructed their score, putting on 82 runs for the fourth wicket stand before Sharmin retired hurt for a resolute 64 in the 36th bowling phase.

It was advantage Bangladesh approaching the last two overs, with just 12 more runs required.

However, Dasanayaka dismissed Ritu and allowed merely three scoring runs before Athapaththu's decisive intervention, with Rabeya, Nahida Akter, skipper Joty and Marufa all removed as the Lankan team snatched the win at the death.

Finally, it was a game of composure. The very experienced Lankan captain, who directed away a few of team-mates as she prepared to deliver the final over, maintained her composure. The opposition could not.

There will be many inquiries about the team's batting display. They could easily have been chasing around 270-280 with Sri Lanka looking settled on 159 with four wickets down in the 30th bowling phase, but in contrast the target was considerably smaller.

However, Bangladesh lacked intent from the very beginning, accumulating runs at below 2.5 runs each over during the powerplay, experiencing a early batting collapse, and finally making themselves excessive to accomplish.

But no matter what issues there are with their batting lineup, if they had taken their catches in the fielding area, that 203-run goal would have been considerably less.

It required them three tries to terminate the 72-run stand second-wicket collaboration, with wicketkeeper Nigar Sultana not managing to grab a challenging chance behind the stumps to remove Perera on 23 before the captain was spared from a return catch possibility against Rabeya.

The batter was dropped once more on 55 and her score of 63, the latter chance flying directly to Rubya Haider Jhilik at cover, before ultimately being dismissed leg before wicket by Shorna as she attempted to up the ante with teammates falling near her.

Subsequently in the batting effort, there was furthermore a missed stumping and a missed run-out, although the latter was a little unfortunate, with Rubya Haider deputising with the wicketkeeping gloves following an physical problem to the regular keeper.

Sadly for Bangladesh, such fielding problems are far from a single occurrence. They've missed 14 opportunities from a available 27 opportunities at this World Cup and boast the lowest fielding effectiveness (48.1%) of the competing sides.

They are a side who are typically moving in the correct path – they are playing in only their second 50-over World Cup after all – but poor fielding performance is a obvious problem which demands improvement.