Rodrigues is out of the Hundred with a hamstring, 22 days before India open the Asia Cup

Jemimah Rodrigues is out of the Hundred with a hamstring injury, which is bad news for Southern Brave and a more interesting problem for India. The Women’s Asia Cup starts at the end of this month, and India open against Thailand in Dubai on 30 August. That is 22 days away.

Nobody has said yet how bad the hamstring is. Brave have not put a timeline on it, and the injury has not been fully assessed, which leaves open the possibility that pulling her out of a franchise tournament three weeks before an international one is as much precaution as diagnosis. Teams do that with players they need in September.

What Brave lose

Rodrigues was a direct signing, which meant Brave paid £60,000, roughly US$80,000, to get her rather than take their chances in the draft. She repaid it. She made 143 runs in six innings and won two player-of-the-match awards, and at 25 she has been among the more reliable batters in a competition where reliability is scarce.

The timing is awkward. Brave went into Saturday second in the table on 20 points, four behind Trent Rockets, who beat MI London by nine wickets earlier in the day to move clear at the top. Finishing first means a direct route to the final. Brave’s two remaining games are against Manchester Super Giants, played on Saturday evening, and then Rockets themselves, which is about as difficult a run-in as the fixture list could have produced, and they now navigate it without their most consistent batter.

The replacement is not a downgrade

Brave have signed Charli Knott, the Australian allrounder, who played for them in the 2024 edition and now returns to the Utilita Bowl. She has had an excellent English summer with The Blaze: 404 runs at 40.40, a strike rate of 138.83, and 27 wickets at 12.18, which made her the leading wicket-taker in this year’s Vitality Blast. She was named the tournament’s player of the year.

Losing a specialist batter and gaining an allrounder changes the shape of the side rather than weakening it. Whether it changes it in the right direction with two games left is another question.

The bit India will be watching

Rodrigues is in the 15 India named for the Asia Cup, the squad Harmanpreet Kaur captains with Smriti Mandhana as her deputy, and she bats in the middle order where India have the least cover. A hamstring is not a long injury if it is caught early and rested properly, which is presumably the thinking behind sitting her down now rather than letting her play two more games in Southampton and Nottingham.

India will not say anything until they have to. But the sequence here, a hamstring on 8 August and a tournament opener on 30 August, is one that usually resolves in the player’s favour if nobody rushes it.

Keep up with the build-up to the Women’s Asia Cup