An emotional Jemimah Rodrigues after leading India to Women's World Cup final. (PHOTO: AP)Jemimah Rodrigues’ 127 not out against Australia in the semifinal was one of the best innings in the Women’s World cup history, its impact mirroring the iconic 171-run knock Harmanpreet Kaur had played against the Aussies back in the 2017 World Cup. Rodrigues hadn’t had the best of starts in the 2025 World Cup, scoring 0 and 32 against Sri Lanka and Pakistan before notching up another duck against the South Africans in the group stages. She would then find herself out of the playing XI against England but returned in the match against New Zealand where she scored a crucial 76-run knock helping India down the Kiwis.
She would then go from strength to strength and played that attritional innings against the Aussies in the semifinals, that went a long way in helping India qualify for the final and ultimately win their first World Cup title.
“After the semi-final knock, my phone just kept buzzing and buzzing. I was getting calls from everywhere. I don’t know how random people started getting my number. I had, I’m not even over-exaggerating, but I had 1000 WhatsApp messages. I couldn’t take it because firstly, a lot had happened in that game. A lot of my emotions itself were there. I’m preparing for a final and the tournament is not over. Yes, I played a knock. Yes, we won. Yes, India was in the final. But, we still had a World Cup final to win,” Jemimah said in an interview with Cricbuzz.
“After a certain point, it just started getting too much for me that I uninstalled WhatsApp. I messaged my close ones, like 4-5 of them, that just either call me or we can chat on a normal message, but I am uninstalling WhatsApp. Because even if I was not reading the message, it was just buzzing. And I just knew that people were messaging me and I just wanted to prepare for the finals. So, till the finals, I didn’t install WhatsApp. I was off social media – maybe put one post-match post, but I was off otherwise until the World Cup final,” she added.
She said that she installed WhatsApp and properly went online only after India had won the World Cup, saying that she had never seen such celebrations.
“After the World Cup is when I properly saw social media. And my whole social media is only about either the semi-finals or India winning the World Cup. I have never seen such a sight. Even till now, just randomly scrolling Instagram and suddenly my video or something comes up. Or someone is talking about me,” she said in the same interview.
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