By: Express News ServiceUpdated: October 3, 2025 04:29 PM IST 5 min readWith 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 made her 50-over debut only in May this year, 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 opening the bowling with pacer Lauren Bell.Those were not just any wickets either. With her first delivery in the second over of the match, she got the prized wicket of South Africa captain Laura Wolvaardt, snapping an easy return catch. Bowling with the brand new white ball, she was generating some 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, but after that she would wait five more years to get another match – making a comeback in March 2024. When she was picked up for ODIs against West Indies during the English summer, she responded by picking up a five-wicket haul on her debut. “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 comeback in 2018, and the feeling that she simply wasn’t good enough to play for England.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“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 per cent 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: having fun.“You obviously doubt yourself, and I guess when I was in it, I put a lot of pressure on myself to be a certain way and play a certain way, and it just ate me up, really. I felt like I almost didn’t deserve to be in an England shirt with how I was playing. So coming out of it was tough,” she told ESPNCricinfo.Story continues below this ad“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.”Last year at the T20 World Cup, in England’s first match against Bangladesh, she returned 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: “Ya, took a bit of time away from the England setup, which I think just 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.© IE Online Media Services Pvt LtdTags:women's world cup