Sune Luus

A leg-spinner (turned into an offspinner in 2024) by trade, who can double up as a reliable lower-order batter, Sune Luus has made quite an impact in South Africa's recent rise in stature. She made her debut as a 16-year-old against Bangladesh back in 2012.

2016 proved to be a breakthrough year in her career - when she became only the second woman cricketer to have taken a fifer an scored a half-century in the same match after Heather Knight - achieving the feat against Ireland. She further went on to pick 37 wickets in the year, equalling the record for the most wickets in a calendar year with Anisa Mohammed. She capped it off with the highest sixth-wicket stand of 142 runs with Chloe Tryon.

It came as no surprise, when in 2017, she was named the South African cricketer of the year, with a central contract to boast of for 2018. Luus captained South Africa to the T20 World Cup (2023) final at home, but gave up captaincy later that year (less than 6 months before the 2024 T20 World Cup) to focus on her all-round skills.

The reason behind Luus, who turned into an offspinner from legspin in her own words (October 2024): Legspin is very much a confidence game, and I think once you lose that confidence, it's very hard to get it back. I was really struggling with that and ultimately didn't enjoy it as much as I did previously. It was obviously a hard decision for me to just put that on hold and focus on the things that bring me joy and make me excited to get onto the park again. I went through a couple of coaches that were trying to change my action and trying to do this and trying to do that. In trying to do all of those things, I kind of lost what made my legspin special. The harder I tried, the more I failed. That really takes a hard knock not just on your confidence in playing cricket, but your self-confidence as well. Obviously, I wanted to contribute in all facets of the game. That's something I had really missed, just the feeling of bowling. I knew I didn't really want to come back as a legspinner. So I thought of what could really help the team and what I can bring that will contribute something meaningful. We kind of just played around with it in the nets after a discussion I had with our new head coach Dillon [du Preez]. I said, 'Just watch me in the nets and if you think that it's something that has potential, let me know and we can actually start working on it. But if you think I'm terrible, also let me know, then I should stop bowling.' He luckily saw something in it. And I think we just started playing around, trying to bowl more overs at the nets and training and stuff. I don't think the idea was for me to bowl in India yet. I don't think I was very much ready. But obviously some circumstances led me to bowling a couple of overs.