England remain unbeaten in the Women’s World Cup after Nat Sciver-Brunt’s sensational century and a remarkable spell of 4-17 from Sophie Ecclestone set up a crushing 89-run win over Sri Lanka in Colombo.<\/b><\/p>\n
Having put England in to bat, Sri Lanka were left to rue dropping Sciver-Brunt on three, as she punished them with a run-a-ball 117 in England’s competitive 253-9. <\/p>\n
The game was delicately poised with England 179-6 after 40 overs, but the captain timed her acceleration to perfection with 49 runs coming from the last five. <\/p>\n
In reply, Sri Lanka’s captain and key batter Chamari Athapaththu retired hurt early in their innings, but fellow opener Hasini Perera and Harshitha Samarawickrama led a promising recovery to 95-1. <\/p>\n
But the co-hosts’ lack of batting depth cost them, despite Athapaththu’s return to the crease before she fell for 15, and they finished 164 all out in the 46th over, Ecclestone’s often-unplayable spell of turn and bounce doing the damage. <\/p>\n
England’s third win in a row puts them top of the eight-team table, one point above defending champions Australia.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Sciver-Brunt played a lone hand as the rest of England’s top order made promising starts but were unable to capitalise, with opener Tammy Beaumont’s 32 the next-highest contribution. <\/p>\n
Amy Jones was run out for 11 and Beaumont was caught in the covers, before Sciver-Brunt and former captain Heather Knight consolidated with a patient stand of 60. <\/p>\n
Knight was caught sweeping for 29 and England suffered another middle-order wobble to spin, including the loss of Emma Lamb and Alice Capsey to Inoka Ranaweera in the 35th over.<\/p>\n
The discipline of Dean stabilised England again as she added 38 for the seventh wicket with Sciver-Brunt, which allowed the skipper to kick on at the death and ensure they had set a winning score. <\/p>\n
England will look to maintain their winning run against Pakistan, also in Colombo, on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England remain unbeaten in the Women’s World Cup after Nat Sciver-Brunt’s sensational century and a remarkable spell of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-491600","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115356878386818057","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}