Lack of test preparation no bother for South Africa head of WTC final
FILE PHOTO: Cricket - ICC Men's Champions Trophy - Semi Final - South Africa Practice - Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore, Pakistan - March 4, 2025 South Africa's Aiden Markram with coach Rob Walter during practice REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro/File Photo
LONDON :A lack of preparation for the World Test Championship final will be no problem for South Africa as they get set to take on Australia at Lord's, opener Aiden Markram said on Sunday.
South Africa last played a test in January when they beat Pakistan to book a place in the WTC final and their hopes of an extensive warm-up last week were stymied as their four-day match with Zimbabwe was largely rained out.
"A lot of our series have been two test series, so in order to win them, you can't start slow, so I suppose there's a little bit of that that's helped us along the way," Markram told a press conference at Lord’s, where the WTC final begins on Wednesday.
"We know the importance of starting well, trying to get ahead of the game early and how important each session is going to be, because there's no second dip at it.
"We have to make sure we hit the ground running and are nice and sharp come day one," he added.
South Africa qualified for the final with a seven-match winning streak but also having played seven tests fewer than Australia, who are defending champions.
"We’ve had a lot fewer games, so I suppose every time you get in, everyone's obviously getting super pumped up to play test cricket because we don’t play as much of it," Markram said.
South African cricket has a long history of coming close but failing in limited overs tournaments, but Markram felt that would have no impact on their first WTC final.
"This team's obviously very different (in) personnel to what the white-ball squad was, so we haven't addressed it too much," he said.
"The few of us that have been a part of previous ICC events that didn't go our way, have dealt with it. We’ve obviously chatted to each other and made sure we've buried it nicely and taken some good lessons from it.
"But besides from that now it's more about the excitement of having another opportunity to actually do the job. So it's pretty much where the mind is at the moment. If we play good cricket, you give ourselves at least a fairly good chance of winning."
(Editing by Christian Radnedge)
