Rodrigues and Mullally: rewriting history with bat and mitre

A match-winning innings and the rise to Archbishop both speak of the quiet power of possibility

Henry Corbett

Henry Corbett, a vicar in Liverpool and chaplain to Everton Football Club.

Sarah Mullally and Jemimah Rodrigues.

It’s a World Cup cricket semi-final between India and Australia. Australia are the world champions. They are unbeaten in their last 15 matches, and have won all their group matches impressively. They are overwhelming favourites. India have lost three of their group matches and only just managed to qualify for the semi-finals.

The match is being played in Mumbai. The ground is packed and millions are watching on television. Australia win the toss and bat first. They make 338 runs in their 50 overs, an outstanding score. India are facing the highest run chase in World Cup history to win the match.

India’s innings gets underway and a wicket goes down in the second over.

Out walks Jemimah Rodrigues, 25 years young, nervous, in front of a full crowd of 45,000, in the city where she was born and grew up. Earlier in the competition she had been dropped from the team. Just over 3 hours later she is 127 not out, off of just 134 balls, and she has steered India to one of the greatest wins in Women’s World Cup history, and her innings has been described as one of the greatest World Cup innings of all time.

What does she have in common with Archbishop-elect Sarah Mullally? They are both Christians, sisters in the worldwide family of God’s Church, and when they were both young children neither knew that there was any possibility of their being where they are now.

Jemimah Rodrigues was born in September 2000 and as a child didn’t know women’s cricket existed. She played with her two older brothers, and hockey looked a more likely avenue for her sporting talents. When she went to play cricket, encouraged by her parents, she was the only girl among 500 boys. Playing in a women’s cricket World Cup final watched by a sell-out crowd? Not possible, surely.

Sarah Mullally was born in March 1962. A woman as Archbishop of Canterbury? It was 1994 before the first women became priests, and 2015 when the first woman was a Bishop.

Now Jemimah Rodrigues has inspired a nation with her sensational innings that led to the defeat of the previously all-conquering Australian women’s team, and India went on to win the final against a resilient South Africa side in front of another packed crowd in Mumbai. It was the first time India’s women’s cricket team had won the World Cup. The most famous Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar posted on his social media of the team: “They have inspired countless young girls across the country to pick up a bat and ball, take the field and believe that they too can lift that trophy one day”. The Indian men’s cricket team’s head coach Gautam Gambhir posted: “You have not just created history, you’ve created a legacy that will inspire generations of girls.” Sarah Mullally becoming Archbishop of Canterbury will similarly inspire generations of young girls in their hopes and aspirations.

But there is even more to Jemimah’s inspiring legacy than encouraging girls to use their sporting gifts and helping to change the culture so that can happen. She has also been very open and honest about her struggles, disappointments, anxieties and about her very genuine Christian faith. In interviews she has spoken about how as a very young girl she was in a swimming pool when her young cousin tragically drowned and how that brought on a deep anxiety in her. She couldn’t face being in a classroom, she needed her mother there. She has continued to be open about nerves, crying, mental health, anxiety and to express gratitude for her family, her friends, her teammates (most of whom are Hindus) and for her Christian faith for the support and help they have given her. The first words in her post match interview after her match-winning 127 were a thank you to Jesus and the next were to thank her family. Another mindset she mentions is her concern to bat not for herself, but for the team. “I wanted to see a win for India, not something about myself.” She has also referenced a conversation with the above-mentioned legend of the Indian game Sachin Tendulkar who asked her about playing international cricket: “Are you nervous?” “Yes” was Jemimah’s immediate, honest reply, to which Tendulkar said “You are nervous because that means you care about doing well. So just go out and do your best”.

Jemimah Rodrigues has shown an honesty, a concern for others, for the team not herself, and an openness. “I will be vulnerable because I know if someone is watching they might be going through the same thing. That’s my whole purpose in saying it. I was going through a lot of anxiety at the start of the World Cup tournament.” And yes she does get trolls on her social media, but she will continue to be herself as God wants her to be. “When I am weak, then I am strong” writes Saint Paul to the Christians in Corinth giving him a hard time, and “I will keep on doing what I am doing”.

Here’s to more great innings from Jemimah Rodrigues (though she knows God’s love for her does not depend on her cricketing performances), and to more opportunities for girls as well as boys to use and enjoy their sporting gifts. And may Archbishop Sarah, as well as having in common with Jemimah a Christian faith and a story of opening up opportunities, share that aim of honesty and openness and may she know great victories along the way, not for herself but for the worldwide team of God’s Church.

Review

Culture

Digital

Film & TV

Work

22 October 2025

5 min read

Heaven can wait: the gig economy can’t

Good Fortune skewers modern work culture with a celestial twist

Giles Gough

Giles is a writer and creative who hosts the God in Film podcast.

A film character talks to an angel in the street who has wings on the back of his coat.

Aziz Ansari and Keanu Reeves star.

Lionsgate.

Good Fortune sees a well-meaning but rather inept angel named Gabriel meddle in the lives of a struggling gig worker and a wealthy venture capitalist, with unpredictable results.

The film follows Arj (Aziz Ansari), a frustrated documentary editor who is unable to get any steady employment and has been relegated to working in the gig economy, bowing and scraping to all app users for fear that they’ll give him a one-star review. Arj has resulted to sleeping in his car and is only one step away from being completely destitute. After a short trial period working as a personal assistant for bumbling millionaire Jeff (Seth Rogen) that ends badly, Arj reaches the end of his tether. Out of the blue, an angel named Gabriel (Keanu Reeves) appears to Arj, trying to show him that his life has meaning. In order to convince him, he swaps Arj’s life of poverty for Jeff’s of luxury in an attempt to show him that having money won't solve all his problems. But unfortunately for Gabriel, it does solve most of his problems, and Arj does not want to swap back.

Aziz Ansari writes and directs Good Fortune, making his directorial debut. Unfortunately, while this film may promise a lot, it sadly fails to deliver. The social commentary is on point, but the laughs are spaced very far apart. It manages to accurately diagnose the problems that society faces, namely that the gig economy created by big tech has taken us back to Victorian levels of economic uncertainty for many people. But the prognosis somehow seems to lack any punch when it’s finally delivered. Good Fortune feels like a mix of Trading Places, a cynical version of It’s a Wonderful Life, with a touch of the sitcom Superstore thrown in for good measure. It wears its influences on its sleeve, but never really coalesces into its own thing. The one area it does flex its muscles is the performances.

Ansari’s Arj voices the frustration of a generation when he says, "I did everything I was supposed to do and nothing's working out”. It is quite enjoyable when Gabriel asks him if he has learned that being rich and privileged isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and Arj vehemently disagrees. Rather than learning any particular moral lesson, Arj has simply learned that it’s much nicer to be depressed in a mansion than in a hovel.

Seth Rogen has the hapless privileged idiot down to a science at this point; there’s something cathartic about him seeing how difficult it is for people trapped in the gig economy. “This is too hard,” he despairs, “How do people do this, without just being miserable and angry, all the time?”

Perhaps predictably, the stand-out performance is Keanu Reeves as Gabriel. Far from being a serenely wise archangel in this iteration, Gabriel is, by his own admission, a bit of a “dumb-dumb”. The film opens with Gabriel feeling frustrated in his current role, stopping people from texting and driving at the last possible moment. Gabriel feels desperate to change the course of someone’s life for the better. Gabriel’s meddling in Arj and Jeff’s lives is not looked on fondly by Martha, his superior (played by Sandra Oh). She makes Gabriel human as a punishment, sending him on a journey of self-discovery.

After the weighty self-importance of the John Wick franchise, it is thoroughly enjoyable to see Keanu shifting into comedy mode. His Gabriel has a touch of his Bill & Ted performance, making him a naïve idiot who lights up the screen every time he’s on it. Seeing him enjoy tacos, milkshakes and ‘chicken nuggies’, simple pleasures that are so easily taken for granted, brings some much-needed levity to a script that doesn’t always manage to rise.

In a sense, Good Fortune writes itself into a corner and can’t quite figure out how to get out of it. It feels like there’s a lot of time floundering around for an answer, which is frustrating, even at a brisk run time of 98 minutes. If there is any area that feels under-served it’s the sub-plot with Elena (played by singer and actress Keke Palmer). Serving as the love-interest for Arj, Elena seems to be the only one clear-eyed enough to see that systemic oppression requires an organised response, and is in the halting process of forming a union. Elena is the only one able to talk any sense into Arj when she says: “I’d rather be back down there, trying to help more of us get up here”.

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