01/11/2025
The most extraordinary thing about Jemimah Rodrigues' innings was not that she made 127 in the most successful chase in ODI-W history. Or that she was on the field for longer than anyone else in that match - 97 overs, in that humidity, under that kind of pressure, and still was standing at the end. Or that she came out in the second over at 13-1 and did not allow the strike rate to fall in her stand with Mandhana. Or that, at 59-2 when a well-set Mandhana was dismissed, she took the lead boldly and positively, till her captain Harmanpreet Kaur found her voice and came into full bloom for a while.
Actually, the most extraordinary thing about Jemimah's innings was that she was done around the 33rd over. She was visibly exhausted, physically and mentally. India had just crossed 200. She'd made 82 off 88 when she gave that sitter of a catch, and was dropped. She had lost her intensity. Harmanpreet seemed to tell her to take a breath while she took charge herself, but that didn't last long. That moment, when Harmanpreet went and their 167-run stand ended, was the most fragile moment of the match. It would have been completely normal and understandable if Jemimah followed her to the shed - it is not a coincidence that large batting stands often see both batters dismissed in quick succession.
But Jemimah suddenly went into a different zone and it was visible. She calmed herself down with singles, without consuming dot balls, and literally willed her intensity back, against what her body and mind had been ostensibly telling her. She got into a flow that seemed to transform the energy of her two batting partners thereafter - both Deepti Sharma and Richa Ghosh played near-perfect innings, taking risks with a kind of conviction that coaches only dream of for their wards in such high pressure situations. Without taking any credit away from them, that collective conviction appeared to come from Jemimah's flow.
The best manifestation of that flow was when she did not bother celebrating her hundred (a huge contrast from Ravindra Jadeja in the 2019 World Cup semifinal that India famously lost), and continued combining risk-taking with calculated caution. That moment when she was so focussed on the team goal (perhaps being a former hockey professional played its part too) that everything else was literally a blur. That fire was infectious and it showed.
This was actually less an all-time great individual performance, more a team-transforming innings. It is going to be very hard to stop India from becoming the first Asian team to win the Women's World Cup title on Sunday, in fact the first team besides Australia, England and New Zealand to do so. Not to jinx it, but this was that kind of an innings, that kind of transcendental magic, where a visible limitation is transformed into something greater than oneself. The sort that happens once or twice in a lifetime (Laxman-Dravid, Kolkata 2001 is perhaps the closest men's equivalent for Indians).
Here's hoping this team makes 2025 its 1983. This was greater than even the legendary 175 (please educate yourself properly if you're misled by mass media - that was NOT a do-or-die game, the next one against Australia was; even if India lost that match they would have reached the semis if they beat Australia) because this came in a knockout game, when the player was spent and a second wind seemed desperately out-of-reach. This kind of magic is never wasted on a single match, however memorable.
