Joty shines as Bangladesh women thumb SL in T20 opener
Nigar Sultana Joty, SLC
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Shakib Al Hasan cleared to bowl again after action assessment
19 Mar 25
Captain Nigar Sultana Joty played a winning knock to down Sri Lanka women in their first T20I clash as Tigresses beat the Lankans by six wickets at Colombo Tuesday.
Joty struck an unbeaten 51-ball 75 with seven fours and two sixes to help Bangladesh chase down a 146-run target with one ball to spare.
Bangladesh won against Sri Lanka after 9 long years in this edition. They last won the 2014 World Cup at home by 3 runs. Then the Lankans won seven matches in a row.
Sri Lanka scored 145 for six after electing to bat first.
This was made possible by captain Chamari Atthapattu's 28-ball 38 and Harshitha Samarawickrama's 44-ball 45.
As each of the five Tigress bowlers took at least one wicket as Fahima Khatun grabbed two.
Bangladesh, as usual, started slowly and lost a couple of wickets early.
But Nigar, coming in at No. 4, took matters into her own hands. Bangladesh was 38 for two after the Powerplay and 63 for two at the halfway point, still needing 83 runs to win.
Nigar smashed Sri Lankan captain Athapaththu for a six and a four to reduce the equation to eight off the last over as Bangladesh needed 18 off eight balls.
The winning runs, unsurprisingly, came off Nigar's bat even though Ritu Moni, who played an excellent hand of 33 off 23, was out from the fourth ball of the last over.
The victory came after the visitors had lost the only completed one-dayer out of three matches on their tour by 58 runs on May 4.
The two teams will meet again at the same venue in the second T20I on Thursday.
