Dhaka: Bangladesh’s spinners helped their team beat Scotland by nine wickets for their third consecutive win before Malaysia recorded a memorable five-wicket victory over Kenya in the ICC Commonwealth Games Qualifier 2022 at the Kinrara Oval in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday. With Sri Lanka already having won three matches, the last match between Bangladesh and Sri Lanka on Monday will decide the winners of the five-team tournament, being played to decide the one remaining slot in this year’s Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
An unbeaten partnership of 78 runs for the second wicket between Murshida Khatun (50 off 35 balls) and Fargana Hoque (20 of 36) led Bangladesh to victory after they bowled Scotland out for 77 in 17.3 overs.
Player-of-the-match Murshida revealed her simple game plan after Bangladesh lost a wicket of the first ball of their chase. “Until the end, don’t lose my wicket,” she said. On the other hand, Off-spinning all-rounder Mas Elysa stole the show with figures of two for 19 and a quick-fire 37 (26) to help Malaysia chase down 89 with five wickets and 10 balls to spare against Kenya.
Malaysia’s fielders ran onto the field once they got the winning runs. Captain Winifred Duraisingam explained the significance of this victory to her and her team. After this great win, I feel a lot is going to happen and cricket in Malaysia is going to go to another level, she said.
The line-up for Birmingham will be confirmed in due course, after the Commonwealth Games Federation of the winning country formally accepts the slot. Australia, Barbados, England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan and South Africa are the seven teams already confirmed for the Games.
After Scotland built a partnership, we didn’t panic. We were strict with our own plan. We knew we could break the partnership, said Bangladesh skipper Nigar Sultana as per an official ICC release.