CF Correspondent

Asian Champions Bangladesh women’s national team was knocked out from the group stage of the ICC Women’s World Twenty20 as they lost to Sri Lanka by 25 runs in Saint Lucia, West Indies on Thursday.

Bangladesh disaster was largely due to their miserable batting efforts in the tournament as they failed to provide any kind of hope and aspiration for the bowlers in the tournament,

Tigress looked extremely disappointed not to register a win after they were bowled out for 72 runs while chasing a mediocre target of 98 runs as their bowlers did an excellent job to restrict Sri Lanka to 97-7 after they sent the neigbouring side to bat first at the Darren Sammy National Cricket Stadium in Gros Islet.

 ‘I don’t know what happened. I was very disappointed for us, definitely. We couldn’t click with our bat,’ Bangladesh pacer Jahanara Alam told reporters after the match.

‘But we’re still hoping, with our confidence next match we’ll get harder with the bat,’ she added.

Jahanara earlier gave her team a dream start in the contest as the seamer clean bowled Sri Lankan opener Yasoda Mendis for a duck in the first ball of their innings.

Bangladeshi bowlers continued to take wickets at regular intervals as they restricted Sri Lanka to 65-5 in the 17th over before Shashikala Siriwardene and Nilakshi de Silva put up a crucial 31-run stand for the sixth wicket to take them close to 100-run mark.

Jahanara removed Siriwardene after she made highest 31 off 33 balls before the 25-year old pacer dismissed de Silva for 12 in the final ball of the innings to finish with 3-21.

Khadija Tul Kubra, Rumana Ahmed and Fahima Khatun also chipped in with one wicket each for Bangladesh.

Bangladesh’s innings started similar to the Lankan innings as they also lost their opener Sanjida Islam for a duck in the first ball of their innings.

One-down Fargana Hoque also could not open her scoring as she was trapped in front by left-arm pacer Udeshika Prabodhani three balls later, leaving Bangladesh at 0-2.