England's third win in the tournamentImage Credit source: PTI

The journey of the England women's team, which entered the ICC Women's World Cup 2025 with the hope of becoming champion again after eight years, continues in strong style. England, captained by Nat Siver-Brunt, maintained its 100 percent success in the tournament so far by registering a big win in the third consecutive match. In the match played in Colombo, England defeated host Sri Lanka by a huge margin of 89 runs on the basis of captain Siver-Brunt's record-breaking century and Sophie Eccleston's sharp bowling. With this, England (6 points) also secured the first position in the points table, leaving Australia (5 points) behind.

Captain Nate Siver's record century

The 12th match of the tournament was played on Saturday 11 October at the R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo, in which England batted first. This time England did not have a good start and only 2 wickets fell for 49 runs. After this, an important partnership was formed between captain Siver-Brunt and former captain Heather Knight, but as soon as Knight was out, the rest of the batsmen could not make any significant contribution. Inoka Ranveera and Udeshika Prabodhini destroyed England's middle order.

But amidst all this, its captain played another excellent innings for England. Siver-Brunt, famous for playing match-winning innings in the World Cup, did the same again and took on the Sri Lankan bowlers single-handedly. With this, the veteran all-rounder scored the 10th century of his ODI career and 5th in World Cup history, which is a new world record. Brunt played an inning of 117 runs in 117 balls and England scored 253 runs.

Sri Lanka trapped in Eccleston's spin

In reply, Sri Lanka's start suffered a setback when captain Chamri Atapattu retired hurt in the sixth over due to injury. Then after some time Vishmi Gunaratne was out. However, here a good partnership (58 runs) was seen between Hasini Perera and Harshita Samarawickrama, which took the team close to 100 runs. But within 15 balls both were out and the innings started faltering. Even captain Atapattu, who returned fit, could not handle the team.

Left arm spinner Sophie Eccleston gave continuous blows to the Sri Lankan innings and took 4 wickets for just 17 runs in 10 overs. In the 46th over, the entire team collapsed for just 164 runs and lost by 89 runs. The third highest score for Sri Lanka after Hasini and Harshita was extra runs (24). England captain Nate Siver-Brunt also took 2 wickets and was adjudged player of the match.