Sri Lanka overcomes the Bangladeshi side to preserve their campaign ongoing

ICC Women's World Cup, Mumbai

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

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

The Lankan side emerge victorious by seven runs

Sri Lanka secured four wickets in the final over to achieve a nail-biting win over Bangladesh and preserve their slim chances of qualifying for the World Cup semi-finals intact.

Needing a modest target of 203 on a favorable wicket in Navi Mumbai, the Bangladeshi team wanted nine additional runs from the final six balls.

Nevertheless, Sri Lanka captain Chamari Athapaththu secured three important dismissals in four balls and Nilakshi de Silva ran out Nahida to achieve a exciting success for the Lankan team.

The win – the Lankan team's maiden of the competition after three losses and two no-results against Australia and the Kiwi side – elevates them tied on four match points with India and New Zealand, who face each other on the coming Thursday.

Bangladesh, however, experienced a fifth consecutive loss since winning their initial game against the Pakistani team and have been removed from contention.

Even though Bangladesh got off to the perfect start, with Marufa Akter striking with the initial ball of the game to dismiss Vishmi Gunaratne, they were appropriately punished for a subpar fielding display.

They gifted reprieves to Hasini Perera, who was spilled multiple times, and Athapaththu.

Although the Sri Lankan skipper could not take advantage, dismissed lbw for 46 a single bowl after being missed by Rabeya, Perera made Bangladesh pay.

She scored a maiden international 50-run score, scoring 85 from 99 balls and sharing an important 74-run partnership fifth-wicket association with De Silva.

The Bangladeshi team, guided by Shorna's impressive bowling figures, fought themselves back to the game, with De Silva's wicket in the 34th bowling segment causing a Lankan collapse from 174-4 to 202 complete.

While batting second, Sri Lanka's initial pace attack Malki Madara and Prabodhani contained the opposition to 23-1 in a lacklustre initial phase and they were later reduced to 44 for three.

Sharmin Akter and Joty reconstructed their innings, contributing an 82-run partnership for the fourth wicket stand before the batter retired hurt for a determined 64 in the 36th bowling phase.

It was advantage the chasing team approaching the final two overs, with only 12 additional runs necessary.

Nevertheless, Sugandika Dasanayaka dismissed Ritu Moni and conceded only three scoring runs before the captain's decisive intervention, with Rabeya, Nahida, captain Joty and Marufa all dismissed as Sri Lanka grabbed the victory at the final moment.

In the end, it was a match of nerve. The seasoned Athapaththu, who ushered away a handful of teammates as she got ready to bowl the final over, maintained her composure. The opposition did not.

There will be numerous doubts about Bangladesh's batting display. They could easily have been pursuing 270 or 280 with the Lankan team seeming at ease on 159 with four wickets down in the 30th over, but rather the required total was significantly less.

However, Bangladesh lacked aggression from the start, scoring at less than 2.5 scoring rate during the opening overs, suffering a early batting collapse, and eventually forcing themselves too much to accomplish.

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

It took them three efforts to end the 72-run second-wicket collaboration, with keeper Joty not managing to grab a difficult opportunity while keeping to remove Hasini Perera on 23 runs before the captain got a reprieve from a caught and bowled chance possibility against Rabeya Khan.

The batter was dropped further on 55 runs and 63, the last attempt going right to Rubya Haider Jhilik at cover position, before ultimately being dismissed lbw by Shorna Akter as she tried to up the ante with batting partners getting out near her.

Subsequently in the batting effort, there was also a missed stumping and a failed run-out, although the second one was a somewhat unfortunate, with Rubya Haider substituting with the keeping duties due to an physical problem to the regular keeper.

Unfortunately for the team, such fielding issues are far from a isolated incident. They've missed 14 catches from a potential 27 opportunities at this World Cup and have the worst catching success rate (48.1 percent) of the competing sides.

They are a side who are typically heading in the correct path – they are participating in merely their second ODI World Cup in the end – but poor fielding performance is a glaring problem which requires improvement.