PLAYER DIARIES
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Move around the batting order just months before a showpiece event. If you ask Jemimah Rodrigues, she might even agree that the upcoming Women’s T20 World Cup might just be her most challenging assignment to date.
Having primarily been a top-order batter her whole life, Jemimah has been asked to shoulder the responsibilities of batting in the middle order, which she has seldom done. Across her entire T20 career, the Mumbaikar has played at No.5 on 11 occasions, but at the upcoming event, she might have to find a new lease on life in that position.
Batting at No.3 and 5 is almost chalk and cheese. While one position offers you the safety of a powerplay, the other will immediately put you under the pressure of taking the attack from the word go.
If at all anything, it is pretty tricky.
30 batters have batted at that No.5 position for India in the past, out of which the median average is quite shambolic, at 15.3. Not just that, the strike rate, too, when averaged out, reads a puzzling 83.5. It is that tough.
But so far, Jemimah has taken that task like a horse to water, not only averaging a staggering 46 but also showing crazy intent, batting at an SR of 142.3. Even if it is by a far stretch, calling Jemimah India’s best No.5 might not be too audacious.
So, what makes her tick the boxes?
A combination of factors allows Jemimah to flourish in one of the most challenging spots, including her ability to play spin, manoeuvre the gaps effectively, and rotate the strike so that one batter doesn’t get stuck in one place far too often.
Read: How to manipulate spin ft. Jemimah Rodrigues
As far as abilities go, these are all quite underrated, considering how India have set themselves in the middle order, with far too many hitters, including Harmanpreet Kaur, Richa Ghosh and now the revitalised Deepti Sharma.
That’s where someone like Jemimah perfectly acts as a foil.
Since the start of the year, the 24-year-old has the third-best numbers for any Indian (all T20s) batter against the tweakers. But here is where it gets interesting: not only does the Mumbaikar strike at 133.2 (third-best) for any Indian batter (min 50 runs), but she also has a dot-ball percentage of just 26.6%, which essentially means that she isn’t stuck at one end too often.
While she isn’t the most prolific boundary hitter against spin (6.5 balls/boundary), her non-boundary scoring shot percentage makes them all bow down to her (58%). Even when Jemimah isn’t scoring boundaries, she takes those twos (8.7%) the most among Indian batters.
“She [Jemimah] will fit into that role well for the simple reason she works the ball around well against spin when the field is spread out. She is a good runner between the wickets and she has the capability of playing explosive shots once she settles in,” WV Raman told Cricket.com in an exclusive chat.
That makes it extremely difficult for the bowlers, who can’t quite now line up against her or her partner at the other end. Against spin, in particular, Jemimah has, time and again, nailed that sweep shot in the square and midwicket region, causing a stir amongst the opposition.
In 2024, nearly 24% of Jemimah’s all runs have come off some variety of sweep - slog, sweep or the paddle. It is so effective that she struck at 300 while playing the slog sweep, 168.3 while playing the conventional one and struck at 200 while paddling them fine.
Even if you try to account for her sweep shots, what makes it more challenging is her interception point; she’s always trying to move down the track, keeping both options open: a) the sweep shot and b) the shot over the bowler’s head. When a batter does that, they only make it more and more confusing for the bowlers.
Had her skills been one-dimensional, then perhaps her place would have only been as inevitable, but she has found a new range during the 2024 edition of the Women’s Premier League (WPL).
Someone known for her game in the V, Jemimah accessed areas quite uncharacteristic in women’s cricket, at least in the Indian spectrum. Even though she still scored 15% of her runs down the ground, the fact that she consistently moved to the off-side to clear up the space in the fine leg was quite impressive.
Throughout the 2024 WPL, Jemimah made it a thing to either use the sweep or the paddle sweep against spinners or use the fine-leg region against the pacers by scrambling around at the crease. In one of the clashes against Mumbai Indians during the season, she even stunned Nat Sciver-Brunt with a six in the fine-leg region with a brilliantly played swipe.
It's rare to have someone with a cricketing IQ like Jemimah's, and then having someone of her calibre against both spin and pace is even rarer, and that’s where India have hit the jackpot.
With the upcoming T20 World Cup in the Middle East, Jemimah has shown her captain that she has all the tools to be the numero-uno against spin. Now, with the newfound range, maybe she could just be the No.5 that India need.
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