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Australia has beaten Sri Lanka by five wickets at the WACA, but the Sri Lankans put up a mighty fight as the hosts' World Cup jitters continue.
- Australia beat Sri Lanka by five wickets with three overs to spare at the WACA, Perth
- Sri Lanka 6-122: Chamari Athapaththu 50 (38), Nicola Carey (2-18)
- Australia 5-123: Rachael Haynes 60 (47), Udeshika Prabodhani (2-17)
Set 123 to win after an impressive 38-ball fifty from Sri Lankan skipper Chamari Athapaththu, Australia was reduced to 3-10 as Alyssa Healy (0), Ash Gardner (2) and Beth Mooney (6) all departed cheaply.
However, a 47-ball 60 from player-of-the-match Rachael Haynes steadied Australia as part of a partnership of 95 with skipper Meg Lanning (41 not out), before Ellyse Perry (5) hit the winning runs with three balls to spare.
"Luckily we were only chasing 120 so it sort of allows a little bit of time to get into it," Australia captain Lanning said after the match.
"We would have liked to have played better and we definitely need to improve heading into the next couple of games."
After defeat to India in its opening game of the tournament, Australia was expected to make light work of Sri Lanka.
After all, Sri Lanka had never beaten Australia in T20 cricket — and was on the end of a thumping three-match series defeat as recently as October last year in Sydney.
In the final match of that series, Alyssa Healy smashed a world record score of 148 not out off just 61 balls, but the Australians' patchy form of late makes those halcyon days seem a distant memory.
Sri Lanka's innings got off to an awful start, losing opener Hasini Perera for a duck when she skied the third ball of Megan Schutt's over, a wicket maiden, to Beth Mooney.
However Athapaththu (50) and Umesha Thimashini (20) steadied the ship with a partnership of 38, before Anushka Sanjeewani (25) and Nilakshi de Silva (18) added to the total.
Australian skipper Meg Lanning rapidly rotated through her bowlers, not allowing the Sri Lankan batters to settle.
Athapaththu has an awesome record against Australia, and looked on course to help her team to an imposing total before holing out to Lanning at mid off.
That wicket put the brakes on Sri Lanka's accumulation of runs, as Australia strangled the batters to concede just 23 runs off the last five overs.
If Sri Lanka's start to the match was bad, the first four overs of Australia's reply was worse.
The hosts were reduced to 3-10 as Sri Lanka's opening bowlers tore through the top order.
Udeshika Prabodhani, who is expected to retire after this World Cup, extracted prodigious swing with the new ball, bowling Healy with a beautiful inswinger that clipped the bails, before claiming the wicket of Gardner in the same manner.
Mooney was next to fall as spinner Shashikala Siriwardene drew the Australian opener forward, beating the outside edge to allow the keeper, Sanjeewani, to remove the bails.
That bought Haynes and Lanning to the middle as Australia looked to rebuild its innings and salvage its World Cup in front of a stunned crowd at the WACA.
Haynes and Lanning both looked sketchy, with Haynes dropped when on 26 and Lanning given not out when on 15, despite replays appearing to show a noise as the ball passed the bat off the bowling of Kavisha Dilhari.
Sri Lanka had already used its review in an attempt to capitalise on its impressive start to take the wicket of Lanning for a duck in the fourth over, but replays showed the skipper had hit the glove of the keeper and not the ball.
Lanning, despite not being at her best, was still able to manoeuvre the ball into the gaps as the Aussies rebuilt their innings and helped settle any nerves with a steady innings.
"I thought our bowling was really good today, our fielding was good," Lanning said.
"It was just a little bit of an unsettling start with the bat."
Australia's next match is against Bangladesh in Canberra on Thursday night.
See how all the action unfolded in our live blog.
Topics: cricket, sport, twenty20, perth-6000, wa, australia
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