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Jemimah Rodrigues - (Source:X.com)
On Saturday, January 10, Delhi Capitals locked horns against Mumbai Indians for the third match of WPL 2026. The Capitals will kickstart their campaign, while the Mumbai Indians are playing their second match of the tournament.
Shedding light on Delhi Capitals, it is a historic night for Jemimah Rodrigues as the right-handed batter donned the captain’s hat for the first time in her career. After Meg Lanning’s departure from Delhi after WPL 2025, the management turned their eye towards Jemimah and saw a leader in the 25-year-old.
Jemimah Rodrigues leaves behind Smriti Mandhana
Interestingly, Jemimah is making her WPL captaincy debut at the age of 25 years, 127 days. With this feat, the right-handed batter has left behind Smriti Mandhana to become the youngest captain in the history of WPL. Prior to Jemimah, Mandhana held the record for leading the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) at the age of 26 years, 230 days.
Notably, the Delhi Capitals' management had hinted that Jemimah Rodrigues will take over from Meg Lanning during WPL 2026 mega-auction, when JSW owner Parth Jindal stated that the next Delhi Capitals' captain will be an Indian.
Jemimah prefered ahead of Laura Wolvaardt for captaincy
Delhi Capitals have placed a big bet on Jemimah Rodrigues for WPL 2026 as the Capitals also have Laura Wolvaardt for the ongoing season and the South Africa captain needs no introduction. Compared to Jemimah, Laura leads South Africa and also captained the Proteas during Women's World Cup 2025, where the Rainbow Nation faced India in the final.
Therefore, Delhi have made a bold call to not hand over the captaincy duty to the tried and test. Rather, the three-time runners-up have gone ahead with Jemimah and placed a Rishabh Pant-like bet on her.
For the unversed, Rishabh Pant took over as Delhi Capitals captain in 2021 when he was just 24-years-old.
Jemimah Rodrigues wins toss on her captaincy debut
Jemimah's captaincy stint got off to a desired start as the 25-year-old won the toss against Harmanpreet Kaur and eventually Capitals got to bowl first at the DY Patil Stadium.
"We are going to bowl first. Obviously, 100%! DY Patil has been very special for me. My Test debut was here. My first-ever World Cup final that we won was here. Now, my WPL captaincy debut is here," remarked Jemimah at the toss.
At the time of writing this article, the third match of WPL 2026 is underway.
