Indian women's cricket team player Jemimah Rodrigues on Sunday made a cryptic reference to her teammate and close friend Smriti Mandhana's wedding being called off.
The prolific cricketer, who even skipped the last four games of the 2025 Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL) to be with Mandhana, put a reel of a group of singers singing Olivia Dean's 2025 hit, 'Man I Need' on her Instagram Story.
The reel was captioned with a line from the song's lyrics, said to be a reference to Mandhana's wedding with filmmaker-composer Palash Muchhal being called off: 'Be the man that I need'.
At its core, the soul pop song is about a longing for clarity and real love in a relationship.
Following weeks of speculations over her wedding with Muchhal that was postponed on November 23, Mandhana on Sunday clarified that the wedding was "called off", and that it was "time to move forward".
"I would like to close this matter here and implore all of you to do the same," she said, not offering any reason behind the cancellation.
"Allow us the space to process and move on at our own pace."
Muchhal, however, has taken a different stance: after Smriti released her statement and then unfollowed him on social media, he declared that he would be sending large-scale legal notices to news agencies and social media users on X and Reddit, blaming them for the wedding being called off.
Originally postponed on November 23, after Smriti's father Shrinivas suffered "heart attack-like" symptoms and Palash had a viral fever—which landed them both in hospital—allegations that Muchhal had cheated soon came out, creating a social media firestorm around the highly anticipated wedding.