South Africa play their first Test since winning the World Test Championship against Australia in June with a two-match Test series in Pakistan. Aiden Markram will be leading them, with Temba Bavuma out with a calf strain, and he admitted that the Proteas will now have a target on their backs.
“I suppose you create a bit of a target on your back if you’ve won (the WTC), and if that’s the case, it’s fair,” Markram told reporters in South Africa before the team left for Pakistan. “We want to chase a place in the final again and lift that trophy once again but realise each team will be coming for us.”
“We, as a team, have to keep getting better and improving and playing well in all different types of conditions. It starts for us in Pakistan, and it’s a challenge the boys will be up for,” he told a press conference on Monday.
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It will be a spin onslaught for South Africa to start their new WTC cycle. They play in Rawalpindi from October 12, and Lahore from October 20 in Pakistan, where 29 out of 31 wickets fell to spin the last time Test matches were played there. After that, South Africa’s next tour is in India where they will arguably face an even bigger challenge with facing spin.
Markram said that the Proteas have been practising on specially prepared spinning wickets at Pretoria’s High Performance Centre. “There were a couple of nets prepared where the spin is really exaggerated, and you’d rather err on that side, and maybe then it’s a bit easier when we get to Pakistan,” Markram said.
“We’re expecting to face a lot of spin over there, and it’s also, naturally, a lot lower there from a seam point of view. There’s a lot of skiddy, so it’s hard to try and emulate that here in South Africa, but we’ve been looking to put a lot of emphasis on finding a way to train for that.”
