Bangladesh had a wonderful debut campaign in the ICC Women’s World Cup 2022. Even though they won just one of their 7 matches, the amount of competence they showed was just amazing. They played as a team and fought till the very end which made them look like a confident side.
They started World Cup with a close defeat against South Africa. The bowlers were excellent, but the batting was average resulting in the loss of the match by 32 runs. In the 2nd match against the hosts New Zealand, they couldn’t adapt to the conditions as the match was reduced to 27 overs. Fargana Hoque was the top performer for the side as she scored 52 runs with bat guiding them to 140. The bowlers didn’t get much from the wicket and New Zealand chased off the target easily.
After a week’s break, Bangladesh had their big moment as they won their first-ever World Cup match against Pakistan as they restricted them to 225, and won the match by 9 runs. Fargana Hoque scored her career-best 71 and Fahima Kathun took 3 for 41 resulting in Bangladesh getting a historic win. This epic contest was followed up by another epic contest as they almost defeated the mighty West Indies. First, they restricted Windies to 140 in 50 overs as the whole bowling unit stepped up and picked wickets at regular intervals. But unfortunately, the batters struggled to score and Bangladesh lost the game by just 4 runs in a nail-biting affair.
With 3 big games against India, Australia, and England ahead, Bangladesh tried to stand against the giants. Their efforts weren’t enough as they lost all 3 games. But, a huge positive for Bangladesh from these 3 losses was that they didn’t surrender to the opposition and were bundled out. Instead, they tried to stay on the wicket and worked towards playing all the 50 overs which they succeeded in against Australia and almost achieved against England and India.
If we look into impressive performances and milestones from the Bangladesh side, Fargana Hoque is a huge positive with the batting as she scored 173 runs in 7 matches with 2 fifties. She also became the first Bangladeshi woman to score 1000 international ODI runs. Salma Khatun, the experienced spinner who took 10 wickets was the pick of the bowlers. Nahida Akter, Fahima Kathum, Ritu Moni, and Lata Mondal showcased impressive all-around performances. Fariha Trisna, the 19-year-old left-arm fast bowler is a player for the future as she bowled some good line and length and looked promising.
Overall, Bangladesh can go home with a huge positive of finishing in 7th position in their first-ever World Cup and not in the last position that many expected them to. If they get a chance to face big teams like India, New Zealand, South Africa, England, and Australia regularly, expect the Bangladeshi Tigress to be more competent in the coming years.
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