The Lankan team overcomes the Bangladeshi side to keep their World Cup campaign ongoing

Women's Cricket World Cup, Navi Mumbai

Sri Lanka 202 (48.4 overs): Perera 85 (99); Shorna Akter 3-27

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

The Lankan side emerge victorious by seven runs margin

Sri Lanka claimed four wickets in the final innings segment to seal a heart-stopping win over their opponents and preserve their faint hopes of qualifying for the tournament knockout stage alive.

Needing a below-par score of 203 on a good batting surface in Navi Mumbai, Bangladesh needed nine additional runs from the final six balls.

Yet, Lankan skipper Chamari Athapaththu secured three important dismissals in four deliveries and de Silva dismissed via run-out Nahida to achieve a exciting victory for Sri Lanka.

The win – Sri Lanka's maiden of the competition after three defeats and two washed-out matches against the Australian team and New Zealand – pushes them equal on four points with India and New Zealand, who confront each other on the coming Thursday.

Bangladesh, on the other hand, suffered a fifth successive defeat since winning their tournament opener against the Pakistani team and have been knocked out.

Although Bangladesh got off to the perfect start, with Marufa taking a wicket with the initial ball of the encounter to dismiss Gunaratne, they were appropriately punished for a subpar fielding display.

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

Even though Athapaththu was unable to capitalise, dismissed leg before wicket for 46 a single bowl after being missed by Rabeya Khan, Perera made the opposition suffer.

She achieved a first international 50-run score, scoring 85 from 99 bowls and contributing to an crucial 74-run stand fifth-wicket with Nilakshi de Silva.

The Bangladeshi team, guided by Shorna's 3-27, fought themselves back to the game, with De Silva's wicket in the 34th over initiating a Lankan batting collapse from 174 with four wickets down to 202 total.

In reply, Sri Lanka's initial pace attack Madara and Prabodhani restricted Bangladesh to 23 with one wicket down in a uninspiring opening overs and they were subsequently brought down to 44 for three.

Sharmin and Nigar Sultana Joty reconstructed their score, contributing 82 runs for the fourth wicket stand before the batter left the field injured for a stubborn 64 in the 36th over.

It was in favor of the chasing team heading into the last two innings segments, with only 12 more runs needed.

Yet, Dasanayaka dismissed Ritu Moni and conceded merely three scoring runs before the captain's chaos, with Rabeya, Nahida, captain Joty and Marufa all dismissed as the Lankan team snatched the triumph at the death.

Finally, it was a contest of nerves. The highly experienced Lankan captain, who moved aside a handful of team-mates as she prepared to deliver the decisive over, held hers. Bangladesh failed to.

There will be numerous inquiries about the team's batting effort. They could easily have been pursuing 270 or 280 with the Lankan team looking comfortable on 159-4 in the 30th bowling phase, but instead the chase was significantly less.

Nevertheless, the batting side showed little intent from the start, accumulating runs at below 2.5 runs per over during the opening overs, suffering a early batting collapse, and finally forcing themselves excessive to achieve.

But no matter what difficulties there are with their batting approach, if they had accepted their catches in the fielding department, that 203 total goal would have been substantially less.

It needed them three tries to end the 72-run stand second-wicket, with keeper Nigar Sultana not managing to hold a difficult chance behind the stumps to remove Hasini Perera on her score of 23 before Athapaththu was spared from a caught and bowled possibility against Rabeya.

The batter was missed further on 55 and her score of 63, the last attempt flying right to Jhilik at cover field, before eventually being dismissed lbw by Shorna Akter as she tried to accelerate the scoring with batting partners getting out around her.

Later in the innings, there was furthermore a missed stumping and a missed run-out, even though the second one was a slightly unlucky, with Jhilik standing in with the gloves following an injury to Joty.

Sadly for the team, such fielding woes are nowhere near a single occurrence. They've failed to catch 14 chances from a available 27 chances at this World Cup and have the worst catching success rate (less than 50%) of the participating teams.

They are a side who are generally moving in the proper way – they are participating in merely their second 50-over World Cup ultimately – but poor fielding standards is a obvious issue which demands focus.