Australia Women comprehensively defeated Bangladesh Women by 5 wickets in the last match for the side at the group stage. The game was cut short to 43 overs per side due to rain before the play commenced.
Australians have shown utter dominance throughout the round-robin stage by winning 7 out of 7 games. On the other hand, Bangladesh Women have lost 5 out of 6 their matches and sit awkwardly at 7th position in the points table.
Here’s how the game panned out:
Australian captain Meg Lanning won the toss and opted to bowl first, a common preference in the tournament.
Batting first, Bangladesh could never up the ante in their innings and kept losing wickets at a crucial juncture in the match. Australian bowlers tended to take the quote, ‘strike the iron when it is hot’ too seriously during the match cause when it just felt like Bangladesh was on the verge of breaking through the shackles, Australia pulled them back with a wicket.
Lata Mondal had top-scored for Bangladesh with 33 in 63 balls to propel her side to 135/6 in 43 overs. Darcie Brown and Jess Jonassen took two wickets for Australia Women, while Sutherland and Schutt dismissed one batter each.
Chasing 136, Australia Women seemed in a bit of trouble early on in their innings when they lost the top-three batters for just 26 runs in 9.2 overs. However, Beth Mooney took command of the chase and scored an unbeaten 66* off 75, including 5 fours to make Australia cross the finish line.
For Bangladesh, Salma Khatun was the pick of the bowlers with 3 wickets to her name. She dismissed the trio of Alyssa Healy, Rachael Haynes and Meg Lanning. Nevertheless, Australia comfortably chased down the target to register another win. At the moment, the Australians are unstoppable. Will any team be able to put the brakes on the Australian team in the semi-final or final? Do let us know what you think about that?
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