London: Indian cricketers Jemimah Rodrigues, Smriti Mandhana are among the women overseas players who have been retained by their respective teams for the 2022 edition of The Hundred.
Rodrigues (Northern Superchargers) and Mandhana (Southern Brave) are the only two Indian internationals to have been retained. The likes of Harmanpreet Kaur, Shafali Verma, Deepti Sharma, who also played the Hundred last year, have not been retained by their franchises and will be available for selection by other teams.
The opening batter Smriti Mandhana scored 167 runs from seven innings at a strike rate of 133.60 in the last season. However, she left the tournament mid-way and flew back home to spend time with her family before the Indian team’s tour of Australia. She also scored the second-highest score in the Women’s competition by making 78 against Welsh Fire.
On the other hand, Rodrigues started the tournament with a scintillating unbeaten 92 off 43 balls, studded with 17 fours and a six, to script a dramatic come-from-behind win for her team, and followed it with two more half-centuries — 60 off 41 and 57 off 44 — to accumulate 241 runs in five innings, averaging 60.25 and striking at 154.48.
Jemimah also had a great outing in the WBBL. However, she failed to make the cut for India’s ICC Women’s World Cup squad after her ordinary form for the national side.
The stylish batter found herself in a rut in 2021 when cricket finally resumed for India after a year-long hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In the ODIs against South Africa at home, she managed scores of 1, 9 and 0 before scoring 30 and 16 in the T20Is.
In England a few months later, she played only the second and third ODIs and laboured to 8 off 15 and 4 off 21 before being benched for the T20I series.
She was recently seen playing rink hockey in a tournament in Mumbai. Rodrigues also has a keen interest in hockey, a sport she has been playing since her childhood.
Meanwhile, Amanda-Jade Wellington, who was Southern Brave’s leading wicket-taker as they reached the final last year, has also recommitted while defending champions Oval Invincibles have retained their South African trio of Dane van Niekerk, Marizanne Kapp and Shabnim Ismail.
Even though the Australian players didn’t take part last year in the inaugural season of Hundred due to quarantine requirements, Birmingham Phoenix and Northern Superchargers have retained Ellyse Perry and Alyssa Healy. Sophie Devine (Phoenix), Lizelle Lee (Manchester Originals), Laura Wolvaardt (Superchargers) and Hayley Matthews (Welsh Fire) are the other overseas cricketers who complete the list of 12 overseas players to have signed up in the women’s competition so far.
Teams can now offer contracts to players as part of an open-market system and the ECB will announce further signings on March 30.
(IANS)
