were beaten by West Indies<\/a> in their opening game, meaning they are now in danger of missing out on the semi-finals.<\/p>\nIt was Sri Lanka’s first ever win over New Zealand at a World Cup.<\/p>\n
After dropping six catches in their first game, the White Ferns were again guilty of a poor fielding performance today.<\/p>\n
“Catches win matches and no one means to drop them but it is now two games in a row that we haven’t been up to a high enough standard,” captain Amelia Kerr said afterwards.<\/p>\n
After deciding to bat first in Southampton, New Zealand were again a few runs short of what should have been a winning score, managing 150 for six.<\/p>\n
Kerr and Sophie Devine both scored 45, but the middle order was unable to increase the run-rate.<\/p>\n
Sri Lanka then put on 45 for the opening wicket and while the White Ferns picked up a couple of wickets, Nilakshika Silva and Kaushini Nuthyangana got them home.<\/p>\n
Silva finished unbeaten on 54 and Nuthyangana on 24 as Sri Lanka reached their target with two balls to spare.<\/p>\n
Nensi Patel took two wickets for New Zealand.<\/p>\n
New Zealand sit fifth in Group 2 with two losses with Sri Lanka just above them with one win from two games.<\/p>\n
The White Ferns probably now need some other games to go there way to make the top two.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got to pick ourselves up, there are still three games to go for us and three games for our country which are really important and we’re still in this comp,” Kerr said.<\/p>\n
New Zealand’s next game is against Ireland on Saturday before games against Scotland and England.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero, a daily newsletter<\/a> curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Melie Kerr of New Zealand. Photo: www.photosport.nz The White Ferns have suffered their second successive loss at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45,213],"class_list":["post-480777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Melie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/4JO2QPV_260525EngWhiteFernsT20_3_027_jpg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n