South African captain Aiden Markram is well aware of the extreme spin challenge that they are going to face as they prepare to take on Bangladesh in the upcoming two-match Test series, scheduled at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium from October 21 as well. However, South Africa’s Test record in the sub-continent isn’t good as they won a Test 10 years ago with their last victory coming against Sri Lanka in the Galle Test back in 2014 as well. But Aiden Markram was satisfied with his side’s preparations so far.
“Cricket preps have been going well. We had a nice campaign in South Africa before we came here. So we feel like we are in a good space as a team. Yes, obviously looking forward to the series,” Markram told reporters at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium on Sunday. “For sure, spin obviously is a big talking point especially being from South Africa. We don’t get such conditions like this on home soil. It’s an exciting challenge for us to face, especially as a team that’s relatively young and doesn’t play too many Test matches. It’s just an exciting thing as a player to be exposed to new conditions and learn most of the stuff that we love and take the lessons with us. Looking forward to the next Test match and also into the future sub-continent tours. It’s a fantastic opportunity for us as a team and like I have mentioned we are thoroughly looking forward to it.”
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“We are here for this (winning the Test series) for sure. We like to play some good cricket. We feel as a Test unit, we got the skills quite nicely and have better options now to face spin bowling. These are new conditions to experience and again it’s an exciting opportunity to put many sessions of good cricket together and if you do that, we feel like it will lead towards a positive result. But we have no doubt it’s gonna be tough and it’s gonna be different for us as a team. But again, it’s the most exciting part of it,” he further added.
“As a team, you always want to be quietly confident and you wanna be positive and upbeat that you can win games of cricket regardless where you are in the world. We felt like we have good skills that can compete here in the sub-continent so like I have mentioned you have to do that for hours to earn a positive result in Test cricket. It doesn’t happen as quickly as in white-ball cricket. Definitely backing the squad that we have here to get the positive results and backing the skills that we have in the changed room,” Aiden Markram concluded.
