Nigar Sultana made a career-best 73, but Bangladesh only managed 180 after choosing to bat

ESPNcricinfo staff11-Dec-2022A four-wicket haul from Jess Kerr set the tone as New Zealand began their ODI series against Bangladesh with a comfortable eight-wicket win at the Basin Reserve. Having restricted Bangladesh to 180 for 8 in their 50 overs, New Zealand chased down their target with 114 balls remaining, courtesy brisk half-centuries from Suzie Bates and Maddy Green.Bates put on 50 with captain Sophie Devine for the first wicket, before Jahanara Alam gave Bangladesh a brief period of hope with two wickets in two balls, having Devine caught behind for 21 before bowling Amelia Kerr for a duck.There would be no wickets thereafter, though, as Bates and Green steered New Zealand home with an unbroken stand of 131 off just 134 balls. Bates finished unbeaten on 93 off 91 balls, with 12 fours, and Green on 59 off 70, with five fours.”We wanted to put up a big score and on this kind of wicket we needed to score 250-plus against them,” Bangladesh captain Nigar Sultana said after the game. “We were short by 40-50 runs. It’s a mental game that if you score 200 plus then you make the chasing team think in a different way. We did not bowl well today, the powerplay was not good for us. Jahanara took two wickets and we were trying to create opportunities for more wickets but we were running out of our plans and we couldn’t execute our bowling and batting plans.”Having chosen to bat, Bangladesh got off to a poor start, scoring just 10 runs in the first six overs and losing two wickets, both to Jess Kerr’s medium-pace. Bangladesh recovered via a 64-run third-wicket stand between Sharmin Akhter and Sultana, but the runs came at under 3.5 an over. Sultana then put on 55 with Lata Mondal and 33 with Rumana Ahmed, but the pace of scoring remained sedate.Having scored hit just one four while scoring 43 off her first 105 balls, Sultana managed to accelerate somewhat, hitting three fours and a six while picking up 30 off her next 27 balls before being run-out for a career-best 73. Jess Kerr returned to the attack to bowl the 48th and 50th overs of Bangladesh’s innings, and picked up two more wickets to finish with a career-best 4 for 23.”She was brilliant and 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,” Bates said while praising Jess Kerr. “So she is really effective by bringing the ball back in and she’s really tough to face as a right-hand batter and I’m glad she’s on my team. Brilliant day with the ball and set the game up for us.”