She was the head girl at her high school. Of course she was. She left that school with seven distinctions. Of course she did. She was accepted at medical school. Of course she was. She delivered a performance in Guwahati on Wednesday that schooled England - four-time World Cup champions - in how to win a semifinal. Of course she did.

If Laura Wolvaardt has ever not done the right thing, nobody knows.

It isn't difficult to imagine her as a doctor, her pulse as steady as her hands - one of them holding a scalpel - her patient prone and anaesthetised, the other members of her medical team awaiting instructions.

Cricket got in the way of all that. And a good thing, too: doctors are exponentially more plentiful in the world than people possessed of a cover drive that shimmers with as much quality and class as Wolvaardt's.

So far, so easy to appreciate. What can be difficult is finding passion in all that perfection. The closest she comes to untidiness is bundling her hair into a stub small enough to poke through the hole in the back of her cap.

Wolvaardt is not Marizanne Kapp, whose feelings gleam in eyes that can flash with daggers. Or Nadine de Klerk, a flame-haired fireworks display of a player. Or Sinalo Jafta, who is permanently at a party behind the stumps.

When Wolvaardt reached her century on Wednesday, her smile seemed forced. Did she honestly need to prompt herself to show she was satisfied? In her defence, she had taken 115 balls to get there; probably too many in her estimation.

The last 28 deliveries Wolvaardt faced disappeared for 69 runs. Having hit a dozen fours but no sixes in her hundred, she hammered eight more fours and four sixes to complete her 143-ball 169 - the only century by a captain in a World Cup knockout match, and more than half of South Africa's 319/7.

"My goal was to get to the 40th over," Wolvaardt told a television interviewer. "I thought while I'm there I might as well swing." Job done: she was at the crease until the last ball of the 48th, when she tried to hit Lauren Bell's slower ball for six and found Alice Capsey at long-on instead.

Wolvaardt's strokes during the last phase of her innings were as cleanly hit as ever, but they fizzed with a suddenly torqued frequency. Now they came faster and furiouser. That's passion, but not in the way most of the rest of us are able to recognise it. Which is our problem, not hers.

Wolvaardt shared 116 off 134 with Tazmin Brits for the first wicket, 72 off 66 with Kapp for the fourth, and 89 off 47 with Chloe Tryon for the seventh. Obviously Wolvaardt needed partners to do what she did. But South Africa needed her more.

Only Kapp scored more runs than Wolvaardt during those stands, and her 33-ball 42 came with a story attached. "[On Monday] I had one of the worst net sessions in the last 10 years of my career," Kapp told a press conference. "It ended with me crying."

Kapp wasn't alone in that struggle: "In our net session all of our batters probably lost 10 wickets in the first two overs we faced. And then our coach [Mandla Mashimbyi] called us in and said put a price on your wickets. That made us feel relaxed. Everything was different from that moment on."

England required what would have been a World Cup record chase to win, and when they slumped to 1/3 in the first seven deliveries that seemed impossible. Kapp's inswinger clean-bowled Amy Jones with the second ball of the reply, and the fifth squirted off Heather Knight's edge and onto the stumps.

Kapp celebrated those strikes with visible and audible explosions of what can only be called angry joy. She bent double and screamed at the earth itself even as her arms threatened to fling themselves clean off her body. She was, in the best way, terrifying. Passion? Heaps. There would be more where that came from.

But first Nat Sciver-Brunt and Capsey spent 130 deliveries making the impossible look merely improbable. Then Sciver-Brunt and Danni Wyatt-Hodge used another 34 balls to drag the equation further towards possible. Those two stands yielded 137 runs, and they turned the South Africans pale. Even those who weren't white. The English couldn't, could they?

But the drama wouldn't unfold England's way. In the space of four balls in the 23rd over, which was bowled by Sune Luus, Capsey took a single to mid-on to reach her first 50 in the format, Sciver-Brunt hoisted a six over long-off to seal her 26th half-century, and Capsey charged up the pitch and blooped a catch to long-off.

Still, midway through their innings England were 119/4. At the same stage South Africa were 119/2. England had beaten them in the 2017 and 2022 semifinals, as well as in their first match of this tournament - when they were rattled out for 69. That also happened in Guwahati. Did the ugly memory loom afresh?

"It did," Wolvaardt said. "Same opposition, same venue; your mind automatically goes back to that game."

Kapp knew the pain that came with playing in all three of those momentous matches against England. She also knew the pain of cramp on Wednesday, and left the field after her first spell of 4-2-8-2. But she returned in time to bowl the 27th. The third ball of her next over pitched on a length and moved away a smidgen from Sciver-Brunt, whose drive produced an edge that Jafta held like a newborn baby. With that the game, all involved knew, was won and lost.

The angry joy that wicket brought from somewhere deep inside Kapp made those watching worry that she might injure herself. She didn't. Instead she removed Sophia Dunkley in the same fashion 11 deliveries later. And Charlie Dean with her next delivery. The hattrick ball was on target, but Sophie Ecclestone kept it out.

The English then amused themselves, but no-one else, with some futile fun. Wyatt-Hodge and Linsey Smith shared 24 off 34, and Smith and Bell had clipped 19 off 21 when Smith burped De Klerk to mid-off, where Luus took a sliding catch to end the match with England 125 runs shy.

Kapp's career-best 5/20 took her past Jhulan Goswami as the leading wicket-taker in World Cup history. The India great bowled 1,623 balls for her 43 wickets. Kapp has one more than that, but she has sent down 372 fewer deliveries.

She watched the match end from the dressingroom having again left the field. Also there was Brits, who had jarred her shoulder in the field. They have three days to sort themselves out.

Because no South Africa team, female or male, have been to a senior ODI World Cup final. This side have been to the 2023 and 2024 T20 World Cup finals and lost both - to Australia and New Zealand.

Kapp and Brits should be up for the challenge of playing against whoever wins the other semi between India and Australia in Navi Mumbai on Thursday in Sunday's final in the same venue.

"She's okay," Kapp said of Brits, whose shoulder was somewhere under a big bag of ice after the match. "It's just hurt a little bit but she's a tough cookie, so she'll be fine."

Kapp left no doubt about her preferred opponents for Sunday's showdown: "I would love to play India in the final. When I play in India, even though the crowd is against me, it feels like they're shouting for me."

That may have something to do with the fact that Australia have won seven of the dozen World Cups yet played and have lost a final only once. India have never won the World Cup, despite hosting three previous editions of the tournament.

Whatever. The shot of the day on Wednesday was of Wolvaardt walking towards her teammates the instant victory was confirmed. Her arms were aloft. Her face beamed with a broad smile.

She was, from everything we could see, happy. By the standards of head girls, anyway.