A left-arm spinner from the northern suburbs of Cape Town, George Linde's started off a seam-bowling schoolboy cricketer before changing his mind as a teenager. After he was selected in the Western Province under-13 team, he switched to spin and never looked back. Still, batting took precedence through his school years but an interested coach coaxed him to focus more on spin as his game developed.

Linde spent a season playing club cricket in the UK after finishing school, before returning to South Africa, where he worked his way into the West Province amateur team and eventually into the Cobras franchise team. Competing against Dane Piedt meant Linde was often confined to the limited-overs teams, where he made his name.

He was sixth in the 2017-18 domestic one-day cup wicket charts with 15 scalps and his star continued to rise as a white-ball bowler. He was contracted to the Cape Town Blitz for the Mzansi Super League in the 2018-19 season and took five wickets in as many matches. A bigger break came when he was selected as part of the South African A team that toured India in August-September 2019 and was the joint second-highest wicket-taker in the unofficial ODI series.

Linde was called up as a replacement to South Africa's T20 squad to tour India in September 2019 when Jon-Jon Smuts was withdrawn from the squad for failing to meet fitness standards and was then added as a stand-in to the Test squad when Keshav Maharaj was ruled out of the last match of the series through injury.

Firdose Moonda