“Feels great, it was long-awaited and glad I could do it for the team today,” said Rodriguez. “I just tried to set small goals and keep achieving them. And I like the way I changed gears today. I showed a lot of patience in the beginning, which again was a big positive for me because my It was important to spend time there to get those runs. And you know, I was not spending enough time to make it big so I was happy to do that today.”
“I was angry at myself (the way I got out in the first ODI),” she said. “I need to be positive about myself because that’s what works for me. If I’m too hard on myself, But it was important for me to stay positive instead of thinking, ‘Okay, I got out but in the next match I can do better’. Tried to go back to where I scored a lot of 100s I have scored 200 runs as well, I tried to get back to what I was in then and try to implement it today, and it has been going well.”
The absence of regular captain Harmanpreet Kaur meant she had “extra responsibility” to contribute, even more so as she was moved up to play at number 4. While Rodrigues took time to settle down, he completed his half-century by scoring 62 runs. After the delivery, he changed gears in the final ten overs and brought up his century in just 28 balls. On her way, she also made a 183-run partnership with Harleen Deol, who scored 89 runs. Before their partnership, openers Smriti Mandhana and Pratika Raval had together scored a total of 156 runs.
“If your openers give you starts like that, you know it’s always easier for us to handle the middle overs and handle it well,” Rodrigues said. “(There were) two wickets fell in a row, so Harleen and I just had to give ourselves some time because I think the Ireland bowlers were also on top at that time. So I think one thing about 50-over matches, you You know, we can take some time and that’s what we calculated well. We set a score of 40, just play risk-free cricket and we know we can always make up for it.”
Rodriguez imitated playing the song with her bat on the guitar after reaching her milestone, a celebration she had been looking forward to “for the last seven years”. Although she was relieved to finally be able to do so, she hoped it was the first of many centuries for her. His next target is also to help India cross 400 runs.
“It feels good. But there are a lot of places where we can still improve as a team because we always want to keep improving. We’ve said that when we perform well, we try and talk about it.” Be a little more critical about how we can be better than that… so yeah, hopefully the next game will be 400.”
