Mumbai: Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone, who has often been vocal about her mental health struggles, lauded cricketer Jemimah Rodrigues for her recent revelation about battling anxiety.
Speaking at a press conference post-match after guiding India to a historic five-wicket win over Australia in the ICC Women’s World Cup semifinal in Navi Mumbai, Jemimah broke down while sharing her struggle with anxiety and self-doubt in the weeks leading up to the match, admitting that she cried almost every day.
Praising Jemimah for her honesty and courage, and highlighting the importance of discussions around mental well-being, Deepika reposted the video, in which the 25-year-old cricketer opened up about her battle with anxiety.
“Thank you @jemimahrodrigues for your vulnerability and for sharing your story,” Deepika wrote along with the video.
At the press conference post-match, talking about the difficult phase, Jemimah shared, “I’ll be very vulnerable here because I know if someone is watching this, they might be going through the same thing.”
She continued, “And that’s my whole purpose of saying it, because nobody likes to talk about their weakness. I was going through a lot of anxiety at the starting of the tournament, and it was a lot before few games also, I used to call my mom and cry.”
“Cry the entire time, let it all out, because when you’re going through anxiety, you just feel numb. You don’t know what to do. You’re trying to be yourself. And also in this time, my mom, my dad, they supported me a lot. And also, there was Arundhati whom I think almost every day I’ve cried in front of – almost every day I’ve cried in front of her. Later, I was joking, I said, you don’t come in front of me, I’ll start crying. But she checked on me every single day,” she added.
Jemimah, who was benched after the initial few matches of the tournament shared, “I was dropped from the team. That really hit me. And, when you’re dropped, you have a lot of doubts because I always want to contribute to the team. But that day, I couldn’t do much sitting out. And then when you come back in, it’s a lot more pressure with everything that was happening in the past month.”
“But sometimes all you need to do is just hang in there and things fall into place. So, I think, yeah, so I’m very grateful for the people who believed in me when I couldn’t and were there for me and understood me because I couldn’t do this on my own,” she added.
Fuelled by Rodrigues’ unbeaten 127, India pulled off a record chase of 339 runs at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai on Thursday, securing a five-wicket victory against the defending champions and earning a spot in Sunday’s final against South Africa.
