Women's World Cup: Jemimah Rodrigues and Harmanpreet Kaur script a win for the ages against Australia

Jemimah Rodrigues and Harmanpreet Kaur script a win for the ages against Australia (BCCI Photo)

If India do go on to end the longest of waits – and remember, the women played a World Cup two years before the men, in 1973 – and lift the trophy for the first time, they will look back on Thursday night at the DY Patil Stadium as their Rubicon moment. You can win trophies in several ways, but until you beat a true champion side, you’ll rarely feel like the best yourself.

India’s men may have beaten Pakistan in the semi-final and Sri Lanka in the final to lift the World Cup on home soil in 2011, but almost to a man, the players will tell you that the moment they really believed was in Ahmedabad, when they beat an Australian team that hadn’t lost a World Cup knockout match since the 1996 final.

Alyssa Healy’s Austalian team hadn’t lost a World Cup match since the 2017 semi-final against India at the County Ground in Derby. It’s side packed with quality, with half a dozen players who will surely one day be part of the Hall of Fame. And India took them down, just over a week after a three-game losing streak that threatened to end their tournament.

As in Derby, Harmanpreet had a massive role to play. She hadn’t imposed herself on the competition at all, and some of her tactical calls towards the end of Australia’s innings raised more than an eyebrow. But with Smriti Mandhana falling cheaply for once, Harmanpreet knew that she would have to come up with an effort comparable to the unbeaten 115-ball 171 she made more than eight years ago.

This time, however, she was not the main act, but the support cast. Even as Harmanpreet played herself in slowly – she took 65 balls for her half-century – Jemimah Rodrigues ensured that the the asking rate never spiralled out of control. With footwork as deft as a ballet dancer and using the full depth of the crease, Jemimah manipulated the ball into the gaps and kept finding the fence each time Australia seemed in the ascendancy.

Off the last 23 balls she faced, Harmanpreet hammered 39, with four fours and two sixes. Though she fell with a 113 still needed, the 167-run stand with Jemimah (156 balls) had ensured that the asking rate was well below eight. Cameos from Deepti Sharma, Richa Ghosh and Amanjot Kaur – at the very end – made it a night to savour, but it was Jemimah who once again dropped anchor after her captain’s dismissal.

Her 134-ball 127 will be spoken of for decades to come, for the composure and grit with which she saw India home. Her tears of relief and release at the end echoed the feelings of millions of Indians watching with rapt attention. There was a time when women’s cricket was a sideshow no one cared about. No longer. Thanks to Jemimah and Harmanpreet, and everyone else that chipped in, these women will have a country behind them when they take the field against South Africa on Sunday afternoon.