New Zealand Women beat Bangladesh Women 180 for 8 (Sultana 73, Jess Kerr 4-23) by eight wickets.
Suzie Bates, Jess Kerr, and Maddy Green shine as New Zealand take a 1-0 lead.
New Zealand reached their target with 114 balls remaining thanks to fast half-centuries from Suzie Bates and Maddy Green, who held Bangladesh to 180 for 8 in their 50 overs.
Before Jahanara Alam gave Bangladesh a brief glimmer of hope by taking two wickets in two balls—catching captain Sophie Devine behind for 21 and bowling Amelia Kerr for a duck—Bates put on 50 with Devine for the first wicket.
However, there would be no more wickets as Bates and Green led New Zealand to victory with an unbroken 131-run partnership in just 134 balls.
Green was unbeaten on 59 of 70 balls and had five fours, while Bates was unbeaten on 93 of 91 balls.
After the game, Bangladesh captain Nigar Sultana stated, “We wanted to put up a big score and on this kind of wicket we needed to score 250 or more against them.”
We were 40-50 runs behind. It’s a mental game in which you can change the way the chasing team thinks if you score more than 200.
We didn’t bowl well today, the powerplay was not really great for us.
We tried to create opportunities for additional wickets after Jahanara took two, but we ran out of plans and were unable to execute our batting and bowling strategies.”
Bangladesh’s batsmen got off to a bad start when they chose to bat, scoring just 10 runs in the first six overs and losing two wickets to Jess Kerr’s medium-pace.
Sharmin Akhter and Sultana’s 64-run third-wicket stand helped Bangladesh recover, but the runs came at less than 3.5 runs per over.
After that, Sultana added 55 with Lata Mondal and 33 with Rumana Ahmed, but the scoring slowed down.
Sultana was unable to accelerate after hitting just one four and scoring 43 off her first 105 balls.
However, she was able to hit three fours and a six and score 30 off her next 27 balls before being run out for a career-high 73.
Jess Kerr came back into the attack to bowl the 48th and 50th overs of Bangladesh’s innings. He took two more wickets and finished with 4 for 23, a career high.
While praising Jess Kerr, Bates stated, “She was brilliant and her nature of always hitting the stumps, every delivery she bowls is hitting the wickets with the ball swinging in and we try to swing the ball a lot early on, but that doesn’t necessarily make the batters play.”
As a result, she brings the ball back in very effectively and is very difficult to face as a right-handed batter.
I’m glad she’s on my team. Fantastic day with the ball, which set up the game for us.”