Jemimah Rodrigues was one of the few positives for India as they were ruled out of the final of the ongoing T20I tri-nation series in Mumbai after a 36-run loss to Australia. Promoted to open the innings, the 17-year-old, who made her debut last month in South Africa, scored her first international fifty – a 41-ball 50 – to emerge as the top-scorer for India chasing a target of 187.
The teenager said that everyone in the team was taking responsibility for India’s third straight loss.
“The best part of our team is that we are together and there is no blame game going on because of these consecutive losses. Each one is taking their responsibility and they are agreeing that it is because of us,” Jemimah said at the post match media conference.
About her batting, she said this was an opportunity to keep learning. “I just need to keep on learning, even when we do well, my thing was which areas I can get better, because normally when we do well we forget about everything and get carried away with the victory. When we lose we realise our mistake better and we get an opportunity to learn from it,” she said.
The 17-year-old came for praise from the Australian captain as well. “Exciting talent. Comes out and plays without fear, and we know when we’re bowling to her we have to get it right or we’ll be going the journey. That’s exciting for the game, India have a few of those players coming through, which is really good,” Meg Lanning said.
“That’s just sort of the new nature of the women’s game , those sort of players are going to thrive in the next few years. It’s an exciting sport, great to see where we end up,” she added.
On her part, Rodrigues wants to play in the Women’s Big Bash League in Australia.
“I would like to play (in the WBBL), but I will have to improve a lot on my fitness and batting and I have not spoken to the Australians yet, but if I get an opportunity I would love to play,” she said.
She also spoke about the differences in approach in the two formats she has played in so far in the span of a month.
“It is just the change of mindset, the technique and everything is the same, when you go for ODIs or you go for T20s. It is just the change of mindset in T20, where you need to be more aggressive, fearless and you need to take calculated risks,” she explained.
“Whereas in One Day where you have much more time to settle down and you can pace your innings, but T20 is more of a bold game,” she added.
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