On an emotional night in Navi Mumbai, Jemimah Rodrigues completed a sporting journey worth a lifetime of story arcs, her faith and self-belief crafting a cricketing near-miracle to take India into a home World Cup final, beating the juggernauts that are Australia.
Eight years ago, aged 17, she had been the Mumbai under-19 captain, scoring runs aplenty and seen as India's future batting superstar even before debut. Now 25, she has already lost a T20 World Cup final (2020), been inexplicably dropped from an ODI World Cup squad (2022) and has now powered her team into an ODI World Cup final under a mountain of pressure (2025). In between all this, she has become globally popular for her cheerful personality, a social media celebrity in whichever country and competition she plays in, and also a target for incessant online trolling, often due to her religious beliefs as a minority community.
It's a strangely contradictory cricket existence: precociously talented but perennially uncertain in the team combination. She's the extroverted face of team bonding on camera but cried daily through this tournament -- before bravely opening up about her battle with anxiety post the epic semifinal win.
But it's in these seemingly opposite ideas that Jemimah thrives - from excelling at both hockey and cricket in school, two sports that require very different skill sets and physicality, to still using the throwback finding-the-gap technique to gather big runs in power-hitting obsessed modern white-ball batting, to the endearing mix of gravitas and mischief in her personality. Jemimah just has that rare ability to make two things true at the same time.
As when in her emotional post-match press conference where, through tears, she said: "The Bible says that 'weeping endures for a night, but joy comes in the morning'. Today joy came, but I am still weeping," and made everyone, including herself, smile.
Truth is she has always used this mix of gravitas and humour to communicate. When this writer first met her back in 2017, right after her double ton for Mumbai in the U19 Women's one-day trophy, it was evident that an international debut was only a matter of time for the gifted cricketer. "I'm one step away from playing for India... Of course, it's a dream of any cricketer to play for India and raise your helmet and bat for India," she had said.
She made her T20I debut three months later in 2018, followed by her ODI debut: all as a teenager. Yet, in her seven plus years as an India cricketer, she has not been able to cement her spot in the playing XI with complete certainty. A result of team combination requirements, scoring speeds, some fallow patches and bad shots, alongside good old mismanagement meant her potential was never truly realised.
Until Thursday night, at Navi Mumbai.
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Navi Mumbai is a home ground for Jemimah by extension of it becoming a women's cricket fortress, but she is a Bandra girl through and through. It may sound cliched, but there are some attributes inextricably linked with that affiliation: close family bonds, a strong faith - Bandra has a long history of Christianity, since the first church built here in the 16th century - and music. It's these that have helped her make the daily grind of a Mumbai cricketer through MIG Club and Shivaji Park, and this long journey to a starring role in a World Cup semi-final.
She didn't do it alone, of course. Her family, to whom she blew kisses last night in the DY Patil Stadium stands, and whom she referred to several times during that emotional press conference, were with her every step of the way. Her father Ivan, who has been her coach from when she was seven, and who used to travel from Bhandup to Bandra to train along with a bat too big for her frame in an all-boys club. Her mother Lavita, who, she joked, had the tougher job of keeping her cricket whites clean. Her older brothers Enoch and Eli, whose cricketing skills a young Jemimah looked to copy before it became her calling. This is where she got the strength from to keep going after each cricket rejection, each disappointment and, yes, each bout of vicious trolling.
Jemimah is one of the few Indian cricketers who is public about her personal life, her hobbies, her love for music and her religion. She shares snippets of her with her congregation, singing songs of praise and worship and quoting the Bible. Even when it has put her in the centre of majoritarian toxicity on social media, as when there were allegations of her father using a prominent local club for religious conversion.
Faith, though, is everywhere in the Bandra West that St Joseph's Convent student Jemimah grew up in; in the many crucifixes and grottos that dot the streets of the old village, the celebrations around Mother Mary's birthday in September, the sensory joy during Christmas and the solemn procession during Lent - everything is observed together. That provides a social safety net that allows the likes of Jemimah to be who they are in an increasingly polarising world.
The guitar is an extension of her personality as much as the bat; there are viral videos of her singing with her international teammates in overseas T20 leagues and events. She makes dance reels on trending songs with her teammates and non-cricket friends alike, like any young Indian on Instagram.
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Play this one on loop! ����
Throwback to #TeamIndia's entertaining travel day to Dambulla ��#WomensAsiaCup2024 | #ACC | @JemiRodrigues pic.twitter.com/JDbtVyeXVY
- BCCI Women (@BCCIWomen) July 25, 2024
While her social activities often make her a soft target for online trolls, her social circle is what keeps her spark alive. Her family and teammates who she said she cried to almost daily, her friends who she says pray with her.
That tight-knit Bandra culture has also given her the strength to cry, to be vulnerable, in public. Make no mistake, showing emotions in public, under the harsh and all-seeing spotlights of a media room after a World Cup semi-final takes guts. More so when Jemimah explained why she was doing this: "I will be very vulnerable here because I know if someone is watching, this might be going through the same thing, that's my whole purpose of saying it because nobody likes to talk about their weakness. I was going through a lot of anxiety at the start of the tournament," she said, continuing to talk through the tears she said she cannot control.
This is when she quotes the Bible about weeping turning to joy; it's this faith - in her ability and a higher power - that backed the momentous physical effort she put in for the match-winning century. Midway through that innings, she was low on energy and dropping intensity, and that caused some loose shots India couldn't afford. She started crouching down between overs, closing her eyes and praying, talking to God because "I feel that I have a personal relationship with Him." She also believed in herself, "I want to be there till the end and finish the game... I know if I am there, I can make a partnership and get those runs."
It's this combination of faith and self-belief that she wears on her sleeve that makes Jemimah a special cricketer. She has just played the knock of a lifetime and could have easily glossed over her anxiety and spirituality and stuck to "just cricket". But it's Jemimah's conversations, as much as her century, that make this day iconic in Indian cricket lore.
This sobbing Jemimah is not just a long way from the teenager with a bright smile and braces who dreamt of wearing India blue, but from the one who'd danced with fans after the New Zealand game a week ago, and even from the one who'd been conducting the crowd with claps and heart gestures while fielding in the semi.
This Jemimah, with her muddied jersey and tear-stained face, is something else. She has gone through all the highs and the lows. She has not let the noise stop her, making her runs count even without expansive hitting, proclaiming her faith despite past accusations, and baring her heart for the world to see knowing it can be seen as a weakness.
With one more match to go on ODI World Cup debut, this Jemimah has already evolved into a legend in her own right. And she's done it the Jemimah way.