Markram's South Africa Braces for Spinning Wickets in Pakistan Test Series

Aiden Markram has a blunt message for Pakistan's spin doctors: Bring it. We're ready. The basis for his bullishness will be tested when South Africa start a series against the Asian side next week.

"If it's your home game you can pretty much prepare whatever pitch you'd like," Markram told a press conference on Monday. "So there are definitely no question-marks from my side. If you want to use home-ground advantage to help your team win a game of cricket you should be able to do so."

Markram had been asked if he considered England's experience in Pakistan last October a cautionary tale.

England won the first Test, in Multan, by an innings and 47 despite Pakistan's first innings of 556 - which was anchored on centuries by Abdullah Shafique, Shan Masood and Salman Agha. England's declaration at 823/7 was powered by Joe Root's 262 and Harry Brook's 317. Facing a deficit of 267, the home side were dismissed for 220 in the first session of the last day with Jack Leach taking 4/30.

The villain of the piece was the pitch. It neither turned nor bounced. It was no good to anyone who didn't bat for a living. Bowling on it was a penance.

Pakistan responded with impressive creativity. All involved knew the second match of the series would also be played in Multan, but the home side's masterstroke was to put the game on the same pitch as the first Test. The worn surface turned square, and Noman Ali and Sajid Khan took all 20 English wickets to earn victory by 152 runs.

Rawalpindi hosted the decider, which Pakistan won by nine wickets. Having seen what happened in the second Test, the PCB deployed giant fans and heaters to dry the flattest pitch in the country as much as possible before the start of the match. And it worked - all of England's wickets again fell to spin.

South Africa didn't have that interesting a time of it the last time they played a Test series in Pakistan, in January and February 2021. The home side won by seven wickets in Karachi and by 95 runs in Rawalpindi despite the fact that both pitches were unhelpfully flat.

But, given the way the England series unfolded, the South Africans are under no illusion that the surfaces will be benign this time. To that end they spent from 12.30pm on Sunday to 3pm on Monday at the High Performance Centre in Pretoria training on pitches that were as Pakistani as the groundstaff at the centre could make them.

"There's three pitches that are spinning quite a bit," Markram said between practice sessions. "Two out of the three are really exaggerated. The one that's a little bit inbetween is still offering sharp spin but is slightly easier to bat on.

"And then we've got one strip in the middle that's pretty normal. We've tried to keep it as dead as possible but it's not always that easy; we're trying to make the ball squat low. It's difficult to do that on the Highveld but we've tried our best to try and tick all the boxes."

Indeed, Gauteng in winter - when grass turns a desperate shade of yellow and the ground beneath it has been known to freeze solid - is nothing like what the South Africans will in the coming days. But they will arrive forewarned.

"If it's going to be extreme like it was in the English series it's going to be difficult for both teams from a batting point of view," Markram said. "We've just got to be happy with what we have, whatever the conditions look like, to back whoever it is on the day to get the job done. I'm not too fussed about it."

By the standards of most player press conferences, which tend to yield answers that amount to little more than mealy-mouthed nothingness, this was bracing stuff. It spoke of a captain - Markram will lead the team in the absence of the injured Temba Bavuma - who knew what he and his team, and their opponents, were about.

That said, how much can a team learn from spending 26-and-a-half hours - minus the time they were asleep - in tailor-made conditions? We'll find out when the first Test, in Lahore, starts on Sunday. And in the second match, in Rawalpindi, from October 20.

But, already, we know Markram and his men will hit the ground running. Or should that be spinning?