Jemimah Rodrigues is an Indian women’s cricketer who was born on September 5, 2000. She plays as an attacking batter for the Mumbai women’s cricket team and the Indian nation team.
She also plays franchise league cricket for the Trailblazers, Melbourne Stars and Northern Superchargers.
EARLY DAYS
Jemimah has been coached by her father, Ivan ever since she was a child. Having a strong sports background, she enjoyed sports right from the word go.
She loved both hockey and cricket and at some point would have made the hard decision of choosing one of the two. She has been previously selected for the both the U-17 and U-19 Maharashtra hockey teams.
Professional Cricket CAREER
Having made early debut for the U-19 team, she has been playing professional cricket since quite some time now. Jemimah Rodrigues is the second woman after Smriti Mandhana to score a 200 in a 50 over cricket match.
It came off against against Saurashtra in 2017. Adding to this, she also scored a 142 ball 178 against Gujarat.
National Call-Up of Jemimah Rodrigues
The day was not far away when she would be called into the national side. She was included in the Indian side for a 3 match series against South Africa in 2018.
She made her ODI debut for India Australia and T2Oi debut against South Africa. That year, she was awarded the Jagmohan Dalmiya Award for Best Domestic Junior Women’s Cricket by the BCCI.
In a funny story about her life around her brothers, she mentioned that their parents never let them watch “Tom and Jerry”. The siblings would do the exact same things at home causing a chaos for the parents.
Setback
Tragedy struck when Rodrigues was dropped from the India ODI World Cup squad in 2022. A string of poor performances had led to this.
“I was dropped from the ODI World Cup. I was going through a very bad phase mentally. Cricket is something I love, and playing the World Cup is a dream, and I couldn’t do both.
At one point, I took my parents into confidence. We sat down, and I broke down and told dad that I need to take a break from cricket.”
Inspiring comeback of Jemimah Rodrigues
She then took time off, played a bit of hockey and cricket. And when she was at a better space, a comeback was knocking on her door.
In the 2022 Common Wealth games, she scored 146 runs at an average of 73 in five matches.
The Indian team eventually lost out to Australia but earned themselves a silver medal. She had an electrifying outing at the Women’s Asia Cup, where she scored 217 runs in just 8 games.
This made her the highest run scorer in the tournament.
Analysis
Jemimah has played both ODIs and T20is for India. However, the latter seems to be her forte. She has scored 1494 runs at an average of 30.48 in T20is. She is an important middle order batter who can turn the tide away from the opposition.
Jemimah says that she owes it to the game of hockey for her power hitting. Perhaps, that is why she has a strong bottom hand which aids in accumulating most of her power.
Jemimah Rodrigues in Coming T20WC
Rodrigues has played several match winning knocks for India as well as in league cricket. With the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup taking place next month, she will be a batter to watch out for.
The Australians are the defending champions, the same team that beat India in Common Wealth Games’ final round.
I guess there could not be a better opportunity than this for some retribution.
