SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
In India, cricket is religion, and Indians are now celebrating a comeback kid who paved the way for the country's women's team to reach world victory, but her own path came at a steep cost. Before NPR's Diaa Hadid starts the story, a warning that it contains a reference to threats of rape.
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UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Singing in non-English language).
DIAA HADID, BYLINE: YouTube is replete with fan videos of 25-year-old Jemimah Rodrigues singing, making others sing, like on a bus with her teammates.
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UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Singing in non-English language).
HADID: Suprita Das is a sportswriter. She says Jemimah Rodrigues...
SUPRITA DAS: She's the heartbeat of the team.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #1: Beautifully played.
HADID: The Indian women's cricket team - Rodrigues joined when she was just 17.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #1: But what a catch.
HADID: That's a commentator watching a teenage Rodrigues fling her body in the air to catch a ball before it crosses a boundary line in a match against South Africa.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #1: And then the way she jumps - oh, brilliant.
HADID: But Rodrigues was also an inconsistent player. She was dropped from the team ahead of the 2022 Women's World Cup, one of cricket's biggest international tournaments. Then in October last year, she and her family were publicly humiliated.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: India's women cricketer Jemimah Rodrigues finds herself in an unfortunate controversy.
HADID: That's India Today, reporting on how Rodrigues and her family were kicked out of an elite Mumbai sports club after...
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Her father carried out religious activities on the club premises.
HADID: Club officials said her father rented a hall more than two dozen times for prayer meetings. He was accused of trying to convert people to Christianity. He denied the claims. Rodrigues herself is a devout Christian, and she was tarred by association. Amid a surge of online hate, one user on X vowed to publicly gang rape her.
The accusations reflect growing hostility towards Indian Christians, a tiny minority of 28 million amid a population of 1.4 billion. One rights group reported a rise in reported attacks against Christians from about 150 in 2014 to more than 800 in 2024, a decade marked by the rule of the Hindu nationalist BJP, led by the prime minister Narendra Modi. Redemption came for Rodrigues in early November.
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HADID: She was dispatched to play for India in the semifinals of this year's Women's Cricket World Cup. But their opponents, Team Australia, had notched a seemingly impossible lead. So Rodrigues began chipping away, run by run.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #2: It's - oh, my goodness.
HADID: This is "FOX Sports."
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #2: Jemimah Rodrigues.
HADID: Until she rolled the Australians in the dust of her hometown stadium and got India into the finals.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #2: It must surely be the greatest run chase in the history...
HADID: Amid the celebrations, she spoke to the anguish she and her family faced and said...
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JEMIMAH RODRIGUES: The Bible says that weeping endures for a night, but joy comes in the morning, and today, joy came.
HADID: Days later, India won the Women's Cricket Cup for the first time.
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HADID: The country erupted into pure joy - firecrackers, folks waving flags, beeping. The captain, Harmanpreet Kaur, told reporters that she hoped their win would spark a revolution, where girls could pick up a bat and ball and know they could become heroes. Although perhaps girls from India's minority communities may have to battle through hostility first. Diaa Hadid, NPR News, Mumbai. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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