Jemimah's 'surprising' bowling a fruit of two years' preparation

Jemimah Rodrigues had a fantastic day at the office in the second ODI between Bangladesh women and India women at Mirpur on Wednesday. She bagged her career-best 86 runs with the bat. But what's more surprising was her bowling. She picked up a four-for giving away only three runs in 3.1 overs.

For someone who just bowled 12 deliveries in her 22-match career prior to the match, picking up four wickets was definitely a surprise. But Jemimah, of all people, wasn't surprised at all. She said she has been bowling in the nets and even for her state team for a while now and this was the fruit of her two years' practice coming to the game.

"I'm not surprised, honestly. I've been bowling a lot for my state team back at home. Even in the nets, I've been working like for the last two years. I've been always bowling in the nets," Jemimah said in the post-match press conference. 

"I was very happy that the support staff and our captain they came up to me and they said, you know, we need you on these tracks because I get good turn and bounce. So, I was ready for it. And I think it was like this two years of preparation that, you know, now you can see the fruits," she added.

Her wickets basically broke the last bit of hopes of the hosts as they lost their last seven wickets for only 14 runs. She thinks bowling in partnership was important.

"I think this is an excellent bowling performance. Definitely in between with that partnership. I think, it was important for us to bowl those crucial overs, which Devika bowled from the other end, and she got us that wicket. I think that wicket was very crucial and I got the wicket from the other end."

Her batting on a challenging Mirpur wicket was the base for India's huge win on Wednesday. Jemimah mentioned there was a talk in their dressing room regarding adapting to the conditions and the team did brilliantly in that case.

"Yeah. I think, to be honest, it is a challenging wicket. It is very important what we spoke in our team dressing room as a batting unit that a good player is not just adapts to situations, but also to conditions. So now we know the wicket, we know how it's playing. So it was just a matter of applying ourselves and sticking to our game plan, keeping it simple, and that's what helped. And we just worked on how we build partnerships because we were losing wickets back to back. So, the basic talk was, okay, how we can have good partnerships and take the team through."

Jemimah set small targets while batting. She said she targeted five overs and when she completed playing those five overs, she focused on the next five starting afresh.

"For me, what I just kept the target was five, five over targets. Because you know, when you think of a longer format with like 50 hours, mentally, you're already tired, like you have to play for so long. So, for me, I kept short targets, like five overs. Okay, five overs. And then I'm starting fresh. More five overs, more five overs as if I'm backing on zero after five overs. So I think that really helped me," she said.