Unpacking South Africa's shattering shellacking

We see close games that could be won or lost by either team. We see games won convincingly. We see downright one-sided games. We don't often see, in games involving sides of the quality of South Africa and England, what happened in their women's World Cup opener in Guwahati on Friday.

The South Africans were bowled out for 69. Only twice in their 259 ODIs have they been dismissed for lower totals. Only once have they suffered a worse batting crash at a World Cup. Never have England rattled through them for so few runs in the format.

Never before in the 38 ODIs in which they have been in the same XI have Laura Wolvaardt, Tazmin Brits and Marizanne Kapp - the heart of South Africa's batting - been removed by the same bowler. That bowler was Linsey Smith, a 30-year-old left-arm spinner playing her fifth ODI and her first World Cup game who admitted in a television interview that all she tried to do was hit the stumps. Nothing more nor less - not turn the ball, not use flight or guile. She couldn't be less like the tall, imposing, aggressive, demanding, prima donna Sophie Ecclestone if she tried.

 Smith took 5/36 on debut against West Indies in Derby in May - one bowled, another trapped in front, and the rest caught in the deep. She was the sixth and last bowler Nat Sciver-Brunt deployed - in the 23rd over, once the Windies' required runrate had swelled to 8.10.

On Friday she shared the new ball with Lauren Bell to open the bowling for the first time in an ODI. Her second delivery leapt off the leading edge of Wolvaardt's driving bat and was sent straight back to Smith, who caught it. The first ball of her second over darted through a gate left wide open by Britz and nailed the stumps. When Smith did the same to a defending Kapp with the first delivery of her next over, she had taken 3/4 in 13 balls.

That reduced South Africa to 19/4 in 37 deliveries. They were dismissed in the 21st. England's openers, Tammy Beaumont and Amy Jones, made the chase look like the doddle it was and sealed victory in 14.1 overs. The entire match lasted 34.5 overs, or two hours and 53 minutes, or significantly fewer overs and less time than it takes to get through a T20 that goes deep.

No disrespect to Smith, but bowlers of her modest, even humble approach aren't supposed to dominate batters who have scored five centuries in their last nine ODI innings combined - as Wolvaardt, Brits and Kapp have done.

The pitch was blameless. The bowling was decent, but no better than that. The problem was South Africa's utterly wretched batting; a slew of poor stroke selections exacerbated by worse execution.

And that from a team who, going into the match, had played seven of their previous 10 ODIs in Asia. And who have reached the semi-finals in their last two World Cups, and the final of the two most recent T20 World Cups.

In her television interview Wolvaardt resorted to the cliche that "one bad performance doesn't make this a bad team". Indeed. But how does a team as good as South Africa put in such an abjectly poor performance?

What the hell happened Laura Wolvaardt?

"I think it was just one of those games where the top order failed and the middle order failed on the same day," Wolvaardt told a press conference. "Everyone got out early. That happens in cricket sometimes.

"It's not the ideal way to start the tournament, but we have shown resilience with the bat in the last 18 months and I'm sure we will bounce back. We need to put it behind us as quickly as we can and move forward, because if we're going to take it into the next game it's going to be a very long tournament for us."

Cruelly, it may already be too late to bounce back. Not only did Friday's result dump South Africa at the bottom of the standings after the first of seven rounds, it also lumped them with a massive negative net run rate of -3.773.

If earning a semifinal place needs that kind of nitty-gritty to go right, the South Africans are unlikely to be in the frame. Their net run rate is less than half that of New Zealand, who are one place above Wolvaardt's team.

The Kiwis lost their first match, against Australia in Indore on Wednesday, by 89 runs. It was a convincing beating - or not nearly as shattering as the shellacking South Africa suffered on Friday.

Soon we will find out who has learnt what from those experiences: the South Africans' next game is against New Zealand in Indore on Monday. Will it be close, convincing or one-sided? Or something else an order of magnitude greater? Something that smoulders still in Guwahati.