Australia 98 for 4 (Perry 35*) beat Bangladesh 97 (Molineux 3-10) with six wickets
Molineux, in their first ODI since 2021, claimed 3 for 10 from 10 overs to help Bangladesh bowl out for 97 in 44.1 overs at Mirpur.
Australia were 39 for 3 in the 13th over of the chase but reached comfortably to take a 2-0 lead in the three-match series.
Molineux returned to the Australian set-up last month for the first time since October 2021 after suffering a stress fracture in his leg and then a torn ACL in his knee.
After being overlooked for the first game of the Bangladesh series, the 26-year-old on Sunday produced a left-arm bowling that included five maiden overs.
Molineux claimed three of the opening five wickets and Bangladesh at one stage had slumped to 61 for 8 in the 32nd over. A successful WPL followed where he was a key part of Royal Challenger Bangalore’s success with a man of the match performance in the final. It is the form that has progressed.
“It definitely helped,” he said. “I think you just get a little bit of game experience as well. I think that’s one thing you lose when you don’t play for a while. Trying to keep up and catch the game. That’s how I think about going there, [it] It probably helped me get a few more matches, with some intensity as well.”
Her feats came as Megan Shute, Ashley Gardner, Georgia Warham and Alana King collectively crushed the Bangladesh batsmen.
“We just want to keep asking the Bangladeshi girls questions,” Molineux said. “We know they’ve got a really solid defense and they put a price on their wickets. So we knew it was going to be tough to get all ten wickets today and we’d have to be pretty patient. There weren’t too many bad balls in there and I think the spinners were able to adapt and use their variations particularly well.”
Phoebe Litchfield’s modest run continued when she was run out for 5, while Tahlia McGrath also went the same way. But Perry combined with Gardner to lead the Aussies to a comfortable victory.
Australia won the opening ODI by 118 runs three days ago with Wednesday’s third game followed by three T20Is.