Meet Sophia Smale, the 17-year-old spinner making a name for herself

NICK FRIEND - INTERVIEW: Quietly, the Welsh left-armer has impressed for Oval Invincibles, twirling away under the radar as the latest teenager to make a name for herself in the English game

For this year's Alice Capsey, see Sophia Smale.

The summer's breakout star is a 17-year-old left-arm spinner given the platform to express herself by The Hundred. She dismissed Alyssa Healy for her first wicket, before following up with Danni Wyatt, Tahlia McGrath, Bryony Smith and Sophie Devine.

Maybe it's because the best players in the world see a schoolgirl enter the fray on the biggest stage and consider a need to assert their authority or maybe it's because they haven't any frame of reference for how to negotiate the challenge she poses. Whatever the reason, no one has managed to get to grips with Smale, whose economy rate – among those who have bowled at least 50 balls so far in the competition – is bettered only by Alana King and Sophie Molineux.

It's rather remarkable, and she knows it. In her words: "It's all a bit mental. The fact that I was in the academy at the start of the year and then got picked by Western Storm for the Desert Springs tour and then made by debut in the Charlotte Edwards Cup. Now, here I am in The Hundred – it's stupid when I look back at the season I've had."

It was the same last year with Capsey, taking the tournament by storm effectively during her summer holidays, and Smale will have a similar story to tell on her return for Year 13: of bowling at the world's best in front of audiences new to the women's game almost certainly oblivious to her sudden rise. She was only called up by Oval Invincibles in late July following an injury to Emma Jones.

That call, made by head coach Jonathan Batty, had to go through Smale's mother, who kept the news from her daughter – but not the rest of her family – for a week before springing it on her as a surprise. "I'm still in a safeguarded category," she tells The Cricketer, explaining her new-found penchant for Deliveroo as she gets to grips with the touring athlete life, which has included a 4am fire alarm and the tedium of constant bag-packing for away-game duty.

"I can't leave the hotel on my own. My mum has to be in the WhatsApp groups – she had to approve whether I could have a call with you today. I always have to tell them my whereabouts."

None of that is quite qualifies as a moan, but it comes from a place of supreme maturity and a confidence that stems from growing up playing for the most part above her age. "When people ask how it is being with people who are older, the truth is that you get used to it," she says. "So, it's kind of weird when you go back to your own age because you're so used to looking up to everyone that it's just the norm."

^{Smale has impressed for Oval Invincibles in The Hundred (Alex Davidson/Getty Images)}

Smale was seven when she debuted for Newport, her local club, and was picked for Wales a year later. She played county cricket for Gwent and was the first girl to represent the first team at Monmouth School for Boys, while attending the neighbouring girls' school. That has been on hold this year, with Western Storm duty taking priority on Saturdays. "The boys are all like: 'Oh, for God's sake. Are you going to make yourself available?'"

When the time has allowed, she has played men's cricket for Newport, whose girls' setup she credits with her early progression: she was captaining the under-12s by the age of 10.

This is different, though: her Oval teammates call her 'Junior' and Dane van Niekerk, one of four big-name overseas players, joked during the evening after an afternoon win over Trent Rockets that it was past her bedtime. Even in the eyes of Capsey, only four months her senior but wise after a whirlwind year, Smale is unequivocally the youngster of the group.

"We walked to the gym with the strength and conditioning coach the other day," recalls Smale, "and Caps was like: 'Oh, I don't miss that safeguarding stuff and all of that.' I definitely do feel like a youngster with Oval."

Understandably, having Capsey around has been a major help: she was in this exact position last summer, steadily emerging as a face of the tournament's material objectives as it catapulted her profile, leading to an international debut under 12 months later. Perhaps, though, batting – Capsey's fifty at Lord's was the definitive act that properly propelled her into the public consciousness – allows for a more high-octane introduction than the subtlety of Smale's craft, tying down opposition batters with a rangy finger-spinner's flight and guile.

"She's someone to look up to in the sense of being 18, and she's made her England debut," says Smale. "You never know how far away you are, I guess, performing well at a young age.

"She's incredible: I thought I bowled a good ball at her in the nets the other day – I saw her go to reverse-sweep it, so I threw it down the legside, and she just reverse-swept it way over point's head. I didn't know what to do."

^{Smale's first wicket in The Hundred was that of Alyssa Healy (Alex Davidson/Getty Images)}

Their early success brings with it a fascinating paradox: one of the assumed consequences of the game's gradual domestic professionalisation was an end to youngsters coming in at the top too soon, instead being granted the time to develop quietly beneath the radar. As it's happened – with international debuts for Capsey, Issy Wong, Lauren Bell and Freya Kemp – everything is happening on fast-forward as the game revels in the young talent emerging from the regions.

There is an Under-19 World Cup on the horizon, in which Smale ought to play a major role, but it's hard not to make comparisons with Sophie Ecclestone, a fellow left-arm spinner who – at the same age – was already playing for England. Unsurprisingly, she has been a role model to Smale: the pair actually met briefly a couple of years ago, when Newport were involved in a Lady Taverners' Finals Day and Ecclestone was on hand to present the medals. "She watched the game and said something to me along the lines of: 'You'll be knocking on my door in the future.'" A career in scouting awaits the world's best spinner.

Smale's other childhood hero – "my main one" – was Ellyse Perry, and she bowled at the great Australian during Oval's clash with Birmingham Phoenix earlier in the tournament. "I was a bit starstruck," she admits. "I've always loved her batting. I was bowling at someone that I'd looked up to since I was quite tiny, which was weird. I shook her hand at the end and was like: 'What's going on?'"

Why Perry? "I guess it's because she's quite technically correct – my grandpa would approve."

Grandpa is Malcolm Price, the most important figure in Smale's cricketing journey. "My grandparents are like my best friends, so I always speak to them," she says, returning to their influence at several junctures during a half-hour conversation with a hugely impressive teenager. Price never played at his granddaughter's level but is a well-respected coach and taught her all that she knows.

"Don't even start him," she laughs. "He said to me last night: 'I told you when you were running down the Newport bank trying to bowl left-arm seam it was a mistake.' He told me to bowl left-arm spin. He said I'd have a long career if I became a spinner. I used to quite like running in trying to bowl really fast, which I still quite like thinking about now because I feel like it would be quite cool. He taught me everything, Mr Technique: balance, high elbow, cradle the arms.

"My grandad will sit in front of a scorecard and watch ball by ball. He's loving that it's on TV; he's coming to Lord's actually on Saturday. I think he's going to try and get an accessible seat. It's quite far away from Wales, so he's not normally able to come. My grandma comes to every game. I try to facetime him after every game."

^{Smale has been playing for Western Storm on the regional circuit (Dan Mullan/Getty Images)}

To put into context her youth is a particularly depressing exercise: Katherine Brunt made her England debut four months before her birth, at which point James Anderson already had 33 Test wickets; Smale missed the first two editions of the Twenty20 Cup. Her first cricketing memory, then, comes from closer to home: "It was on my dad's birthday. I was probably six or seven – it was when I played my first hard-ball game, and I got a hat-trick bowling left-arm seam."

Otherwise, she remembers the Newport bowl-out, a weekly competition at her local club, where "you got points for hitting the stumps, and I won a medal".

"I still keep that medal," she says, interrupting her own train of thought. "I keep every medal and every bat. I still have my first bats – the GM Icon was up there. I had my brother's Woodworm for a bit. They're in a box now – I hated some of them. There's one that I hated and broke, but I can't bin it. It's the same with my hockey sticks: one of them snapped in half but I can't drop it because, as a memory, I played with that."

It's the comment of an old soul that belies her years and perhaps speaks to the impact of Price, a stalwart of the game in Wales. Smale's love of hockey is another reason for her appreciation for Perry, a former footballer for Australia before becoming the sport's best allrounder. "I guess that's why I didn't feel too much when I bowled at Alyssa Healy," she considers, "because she wasn't my all-time favourite person to watch. Perry was always my favourite."

Smale hasn't played hockey since a camp with Wales in February but insists that cricket has always come first, so much so that she stopped swimming because the two clashed on Tuesdays and county tennis "because it just got a bit much, training in the morning and travelling everywhere".

"It was never hockey, I can't lie to myself," she reflects. "It was always cricket. I do miss it though."

^{Alice Capsey had a similar breakthrough tournament in last year's Hundred (Alex Davidson/Getty Images)}

Not that there is much to complain about at the moment. She feels indebted to Dan Helesfay, interim head coach at Western Storm before Trevor Griffin's appointment – "I wouldn't be where I am now without him" – who took a punt on her ahead of the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy. She has bowled the most overs of any Storm player so far in the 50-over competition and the second-most in the Charlotte Edwards Cup.

It's not much of a body of work, but that grounding warmed up Smale for what's followed. Batty slipped it into conversation on the day of Invincibles' first game that she would be involved, and a chat with Laura Marsh – the former England off-spinner and part of Oval's backroom team – helped to calm any last-minute nerves, most of which abated with her performance in a warmup game against Southern Vipers that acted as reassurance.

"I just try to bowl my best ball," she says. "As a spinner, you have to accept that you'll go for runs at times, especially when you play the world's best. But I do quite enjoy the challenge of bowling at the best batters – I like knowing my margin for error is so small. I think it focuses me a bit more.

"To put in the performances is really special, but I would have taken just doing okay. To do really well, I don't really know how it's happened. Maybe it's because people don't know what to expect. But I feel like people do now.

"I said to my grandpa last night that I always knew that I wanted to be at this level."