Jemimah Rodrigues is out of the Women’s Asia Cup, and India travel to Dubai with a middle order to rebuild
A high-grade hamstring tear picked up in the Hundred on 3 August rules Jemimah Rodrigues out of both the Asia Cup and the Asian Games. Pratika Rawal comes into a squad that opens against Thailand on 30 August.
Aug 18, 2026
India’s Women’s Asia Cup campaign starts in Dubai on 30 August, and it starts without Jemimah Rodrigues. She tore her right hamstring on 3 August playing for Southern Brave in the Hundred, the BCCI’s medical staff at the Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru graded it as a high-grade tear, and she is out of both the Asia Cup and the Asian Games. Pratika Rawal takes her place in the fifteen.
A middle order that keeps having to be reassembled
Rodrigues has spent years as the batter India send in when an innings needs holding together rather than accelerating, and losing that ten days out from a tournament is awkward in a way a straight swap does not fix. Rawal is an opener, and a good one, with more than 1,100 ODI runs at an average close to 50. She is not a replacement for what Rodrigues does at four or five.
The other options in that part of the order are thin on caps. Bharti Fulmali made her India debut back in 2019 and only came back into the side this year after more than seven seasons away. G Kamalini is 18 and has played a single T20I, opening the batting against Sri Lanka in December, and she is in the squad as the second wicketkeeper rather than as a middle-order fix.
Harmanpreet Kaur captains, with Smriti Mandhana as her deputy, and the rest reads as continuity: Shafali Verma, Deepti Sharma, Richa Ghosh behind the stumps, Radha Yadav, Renuka Thakur, Arundhati Reddy, Sree Charani, Prema Rawat, Nandni Sharma and Kranti Gaud. There is plenty of bowling for a slow surface. The batting has one fewer obvious answer to a collapse than it did a fortnight ago.
The group, and the date everyone has circled
India are in Group A with Pakistan, Hong Kong China and Thailand. They open against Thailand on 30 August, play Hong Kong on 3 September and meet Pakistan on 5 September. Two teams qualify from each group, so India should be through with a match in hand, and the Pakistan fixture will still be the one that fills the ground and the television slot whatever it is worth in the table by then.
Every match is at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium, from 28 August to 13 September. Dubai in late summer tends to reward spin and punish teams who plan a chase in straight lines, which is part of why Deepti Sharma, Radha Yadav and Sree Charani carry more of the load here than they would at home.
India are not the holders any more
It is easy to forget how one-sided this tournament used to be. India won seven of the first eight editions. Then Sri Lanka beat them by eight wickets in the 2024 final at Dambulla, chasing 166 with eight balls to spare, and took the title for the first time.
The two years since have been hard to read. In November 2025 they beat South Africa by 52 runs at Navi Mumbai to win the 50-over World Cup, the first global title an Asian women’s side has won. Eight months later they went out of the T20 World Cup in the group stage, third in a pool that Australia and South Africa came through, their exit confirmed by a six-wicket defeat to Australia on 28 June. Australia won that tournament at Lord’s in July for a seventh time.
So India travel as 50-over world champions who have no Asia Cup to defend and who did not survive the group at the last tournament they played. They should still come out of Group A comfortably enough. The interesting part of their tournament begins in the semi-finals, and the middle-order questions left over from June have not been answered since, only made harder by an injury nobody could have planned around.