With her first delivery in the second over of the match, Linsey Smith got the prized wicket of South Africa captain Laura Wolvaardt, snapping an easy return catch. (AP)For someone who made her international debut for England at the 2018 T20 World Cup aged just 23, Linsey Smith wouldn’t play an ODI until seven years later. She had fallen out of love with the game, even questioning her worth as an international cricketer, and spent five years in the wilderness.
But, having returned to the T20 setup last year, Smith made her 50-over debut in May at 30. And on Friday in Guwahati, in her first ODI World Cup match, the left-arm spinner stunned South Africa with her first spell, picking up three wickets in three overs after taking the new ball with pacer Lauren Bell.
Her player-of-the-match performance of 3/7 in four overs helped England bowl South Africa out for 69, which the 2017 champions chased down in 14.1 overs without losing a wicket. It was a sound thrashing which gave a reminder that, despite a recent run of bad results, this English side is a threat to Australia’s crown.
Smith got the prized wicket of South Africa captain Laura Wolvaardt off her first delivery in the second over, snapping an easy return catch. The left-arm spinner generated lovely drift from around the wicket, as the ball was curving back in constantly to the right-handers.
That is how she accounted for the next two wickets in her next two overs. She breached the defence of in-form Tazmin Brits and superstar allrounder Marizanne Kapp, rattling the stumps with her low, slingy action that beat the batters with the movement she got in the air, and not off the pitch.
Smith played nine T20Is in 2018-19 before playing her 10th match in March 2024. With a subcontinent ODI World Cup on the horizon, the English management brought her into the 50-over fold as well, adding to an already impressive spin attack led by the top-ranked bowler Sophie Ecclestone.
3 wickets. 7 runs. 4 overs.
Linsey Smith, that is how you start a World Cup 👏 pic.twitter.com/tJZ9rBvB5n
— England Cricket (@englandcricket) October 3, 2025
Against South Africa, she showed why she is a unique weapon in the English arsenal. In her own words, she is not a conventional spinner, one who thrives on flight, bounce, or sharp spin. As Nat Sciver-Brunt put it after the match, Smith has this ability to actually swing the ball in the air, generating drift that makes it hard to put her away for the right-handers. “I think one thing that Lottie (coach Charlotte Edwards) spoke to me about in the prep for this World Cup out here is that not to change too much of what I’ve done that’s been successful over the years. And that for me is obviously just trying to hit the stumps as much as possible. Not the tallest, so I won’t get much bounce, which I think can help in these conditions. A few kept low today as well, which suited me.”
She had a dream start to her ODI career in May, claiming a five-wicket haul on debut and showing signs of what was to come in the future. “I’ve been reminded quite a few times today how many days in between debuts I’ve had. It’s a dream that I didn’t want to give up on. I know for quite a while, obviously, I only played T20 and I knew deep down within me that I wanted to play every format and really push my case for that,” Smith had said after her first ODI.
After her comeback to international cricket last year, Smith had opened up about her first tryst with international cricket in 2018, and the feeling that she simply wasn’t good enough to play for England. “I was embarrassed to wear an England shirt,” Smith told The Telegraph. “I was not enjoying the experience. Playing for England is meant to be the best thing on earth, whereas I was in a pretty dark place. If something did not feel 100 percent right, it would derail me. The feelings I would get on the morning of the game were not healthy.”
She said her lowest point came during an England Academy series against Australia A in the middle of 2019. “I just thought, ‘I do not know if I want to be on the cricket pitch’. It’s not great looking back but that’s the reality of where my headspace was.”
In another interview with ESPNCricinfo, she went into greater detail on the self-doubt that plagued her, before she decided it was about time she played the game for the reason that she started to: Have fun. “You never want to give something away that you’ve wanted to do since you were a kid, really, but I was in a pretty dark place and I wasn’t enjoying my cricket. There were mornings of games where I’d wake up, check the weather and see, ‘Oh, it’s not raining today, damn it, I’ve got to go and force myself to get out on that pitch’, which is awful to say now,” she had said.
In England’s 2024 T20 World Cup opener against Bangladesh, she returned with superb figures of 2/11 in four overs. Reflecting on how things had changed for her from six years earlier, she said in the press conference: “Time away from the England setup helped me grow and do a lot of self-reflection and think about how I wanted to be and how I wanted to play the game. Yeah, it was tough, but I knew I always wanted to get back in an England shirt and kind of do myself a bit of justice. I felt like I didn’t play very well six years ago, so yeah, it was nice to obviously get another chance to do that tonight in a World Cup.”
Stay updated with the latest sports news across Cricket, Football, Chess, and more. Catch all the action with real-time live cricket score updates and in-depth coverage of ongoing matches.
6 min read
