Bangladesh registered their first victory in the Women’s Asia Cup 2024 as they cruised to a comfortable 7-wicket win against Thailand. They chased down a small target of 97 runs with 15 balls to spare and gave some sort of a boost to their NRR. However, they are still placed third on the points table with one game left to seal their spot in the semi-finals.
Thailand opting to bat first, did not manage to capitalize and was dismissed for a well below-par score of 96. Rabeya Khan led the Bangladesh attack with a wonderful spell of bowling and ended with figures of 4 for 14. Ritu Moni also grabbed a couple of wickets and registered the figures of 2 for 10 in her spell. It was Thailand’s batting in the middle phase that threw their innings off-track and forced them to play catch-up throughout the contest. They lost five wickets during this phase and their scoring rate was also controlled brilliantly by Rabeya and Ritu Moni.
Nattaya Boochatham was the only Thai batter who managed to tackle the Bangladeshi attack, but she did not find any sort of support from the other end. She ended with a score of 40, while none of the other top six batters of Thailand managed to reach a double-digit score. Even as the Bangladesh bowlers kept chipping in with wickets, Suleeporn Laomi and Rosenan Kanoh picked up a few quick runs towards the closing stages of the innings to propel Thailand to a fighting even if underwhelming total.
Chasing a small total, Bangladesh were always in control of the game. Even as the Thailand bowlers managed to control Bangladesh’s scoring rate in the middle overs, reducing their flow of boundaries, they couldn’t pick more than one wicket to create ample threat to Bangladesh’s march towards the target. Murshida and Tanjim’s 60-run stand killed all the hopes of Thailand as Bangladesh reached their target with 15 balls to spare.
Brief Scores: Thailand96/9 in 20 overs (Nattaya Boochatham 40; Rabeya Khan 4-14, Ritu Moni 2-10) lost to Bangladesh 100/3 in 17.3 overs (Murshida Khatun 50; Phannita Maya 1-8) by 7 wickets
