The Lankan team overcomes the Bangladeshi side to maintain their tournament hopes ongoing

Women's Cricket World Cup, Navi Mumbai

Sri Lanka 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

Sri Lanka emerge victorious by seven runs

The Lankan cricket team claimed four crucial dismissals in the final innings segment to seal a thrilling victory over their opponents and preserve their faint chances of qualifying for the World Cup semi-finals intact.

Needing a attainable target of 203 on a batting-friendly pitch in the Mumbai stadium, Bangladesh needed nine additional runs from the last six deliveries.

Yet, Sri Lanka captain Athapaththu secured three crucial wickets in four balls and Nilakshi de Silva dismissed via run-out Nahida to secure a exciting success for Sri Lanka.

The triumph – Sri Lanka's maiden of the competition after three defeats and two washed-out matches against the Australian team and New Zealand – elevates them level on four match points with the Indian team and New Zealand, who meet each other on Thursday.

Bangladesh, however, suffered a fifth successive setback since securing victory in their first match against the Pakistani team and have been eliminated.

Although the Bangladeshi side made the excellent commencement, with Marufa Akter taking a wicket with the opening bowl of the match to dismiss Vishmi Gunaratne, they were deservedly penalized for a subpar fielding performance.

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

Even though the Sri Lankan skipper could not make it count, sent back lbw for 46 a single bowl after being missed by Rabeya, Hasini Perera made Bangladesh suffer.

She scored a maiden international fifty, making 85 from 99 bowls and contributing to an significant 74-run stand fifth-wicket association with Nilakshi de Silva.

Bangladesh, spearheaded by Shorna Akter's three wickets for 27 runs, fought themselves back to the match, with De Silva's removal in the 34th bowling segment causing a Sri Lanka batting collapse from 174-4 to 202 complete.

While batting second, Sri Lanka's initial pace attack Malki Madara and Prabodhani limited Bangladesh to 23 with one wicket down in a uninspiring initial phase and they were later reduced to 44 with three wickets lost.

Sharmin Akter and Nigar Sultana Joty reconstructed their batting effort, putting on 82 runs for the fourth wicket before the batter left the field injured for a stubborn 64 in the 36th innings segment.

It was advantage Bangladesh entering the final two bowling phases, with merely 12 more runs necessary.

Yet, Dasanayaka sent back Ritu Moni and gave away only three runs before Athapaththu's dramatic spell, with Rabeya Khan, Nahida Akter, skipper Joty and Marufa Akter all removed as Sri Lanka snatched the triumph at the very end.

In the end, it was a game of composure. The highly experienced Lankan captain, who directed away a few of team-mates as she set herself to deliver the decisive over, kept her nerve. Bangladesh did not.

There will be plenty of inquiries about Bangladesh's batting effort. They might well have been chasing 270 to 280 with Sri Lanka looking settled on 159-4 in the 30th over, but rather the target was considerably smaller.

However, Bangladesh displayed insufficient aggression from the very beginning, scoring at less than 2.5 scoring rate during the initial phase, suffering a initial wicket loss, and eventually making themselves overwhelming to do.

But whatever difficulties there are with their batting, if they had accepted their chances in the field, that 203-run target target would have been substantially less.

It took them three attempts to terminate the 72-run stand second-wicket, with keeper Nigar Sultana failing to grab a difficult chance as wicketkeeper to dismiss Hasini Perera on 23 runs before Athapaththu got a reprieve from a caught and bowled chance possibility against Rabeya.

The batter was spilled once more on 55 runs and 63 runs, the final opportunity going directly to Jhilik at cover field, before eventually being dismissed lbw by Shorna as she sought to up the ante with partners getting out around her.

Afterwards in the innings, there was additionally a failed stumping and a missed run-out, even though the run-out chance was a somewhat unfortunate, with Jhilik standing in with the keeping duties after an injury to the regular keeper.

Unfortunately for the team, such fielding issues are nowhere near a one-off. They've failed to catch 14 opportunities from a available 27 chances at this competition and boast the worst fielding effectiveness (48.1%) of the eight teams.

They are a team who are overall progressing in the right direction – they are participating in just their second one-day World Cup after all – but inadequate fielding is a obvious problem which needs improvement.