England romped home with a 10-wicket win in their World Cup opener on Friday, after dismissing opponents South Africa for 69 in 20.4 overs \u2013 the third lowest total in their history.<\/p>\n
South Africa have been a force to be reckoned with in global women\u2019s cricket of late, reaching the final of the T20 World Cup last year and featuring in the semi-finals of the last 50-over competition, so this was a baffling and embarrassing display. Only one batter, wicketkeeper Sinalo Jafta, made it into double figures, and six of their batters were clean bowled on a good pitch which rarely behaved unpredictably.<\/p>\n
In reply, England\u2019s new-look opening partnership of Tammy Beaumont and Amy Jones made short work of the chase, wrapping up the match with 215 balls remaining \u2013 their first World Cup win secured in just under three hours. Perhaps more importantly in what could be a tight round-robin competition, England\u2019s net run rate is now a more-than-healthy 3.77.<\/p>\n
After England won the toss and inserted South Africa, Linsey Smith\u2019s opening spell set the tone, the left-arm spinner achieving a remarkable return of 4-2-7-3 in her first ever 50-over World Cup match. She took a smart return catch to see off South Africa\u2019s captain Laura Wolvaardt, before drifting the ball in to rattle the stumps of Tazmin Brits and Marizanne Kapp.<\/p>\n
Captain Nat Sciver-Brunt brought herself on as first-change and enjoyed a dream return to international bowling, trapping Anneke Bosch leg-before with her first ball since January\u2019s Ashes series. In her next over, Chloe Tryon sent up a tame leading edge to Alice Capsey at mid-on, as South Africa sunk to 38 for six within the opening 11 overs.<\/p>\n
Given Sciver-Brunt\u2019s slow return to bowling fitness over the past nine months, there had been some debate as to how many overs she might manage in this match, with England opting to play both Capsey and Emma Lamb partly to ensure there were back-up bowling options.<\/p>\n
But three overs were all that was required of Sciver-Brunt: a combination of Sophie Ecclestone and Charlie Dean neatly finished off the South African tail. Heather Knight, returning after a lengthy battle with a hamstring injury, looked raring to go: she was not required with the bat on this occasion, but did hold onto a sharp shoulder-height catch at slip which put an end to Nadine de Klerk.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Subscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers’ thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week\u2019s action<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n England\u2019s fielding \u2013 so often under the spotlight these days \u2013 was barely tested here. Instead it was South Africa who fumbled the chance to run out Jones early on, while Masabata Klaas put down a straightforward return catch proffered up by Jones on 31 \u2013 South Africa\u2019s best chance of taking a wicket. Instead, Jones continued to loft the ball down the ground, finishing unbeaten on 40. World Cup cricket has never been so easy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England romped home with a 10-wicket win in their World Cup opener on Friday, after dismissing opponents South…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187629,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-187628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}