Markram: I need to score runs to win back my Proteas spot

While the Covid lockdown was obviously a major blow to businesses, for Aiden Markram it was a time to clear his mind and he said on Wednesday that the Proteas as a whole are hoping to bring clarity of thought to their Test series against Sri Lanka which starts at Centurion on Saturday.

South Africa’s Test form has been dismal ever since they suffered the shock 2-0 loss to Sri Lanka at home in early 2019 and Markram’s own fortunes also plunged at the same time. Both team and player have identified the need to start from scratch again in the longest form of the game.

“We’re excited to get back in the whites again and start playing good Test cricket,” Markram said on Wednesday.

“We’ve touched on what happened last time against Sri Lanka and at the end of the day our skills were not up to scratch, we did not perform well enough to win. It’s about performances on the board, that’s how you get results, and for the batsmen there is an individual responsibility to go really big and put the team in position to win.

“We haven’t done that enough in Test cricket lately and we need to do that from the start; it’s about hitting the ground running.

“Personally, I feel my performances certainly have not been good enough over the last 18 months and I am playing for my spot again so I need to score a lot of runs, get some big partnerships going so we can put big runs on the board.”

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The opening batsman added the biggest help of lockdown was that it allowed him to clear his mind.

“I played a lot of cricket while I was struggling and when you’re out of form everything seems rushed and there are just so many games coming thick and fast. So I had clouded thoughts, but lockdown allowed me to slow down and touch base with what worked in the past.”

And the 26-year-old certainly seems to be back in the right frame of mind as Markram goes into the Test series as the leading batsman, in terms of average (77.71), in domestic four-day cricket, having scored three successive centuries.

It would be stupid for the Proteas to ignore such hot form and Markram is likely to join the same top six, with the exception of Rassie van der Dussen coming in for the retired Hashim Amla, that disappointed against the Sri Lankans in 2019.

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Markram said as long as the batsmen don’t go on any crazy flights of fancy out of their individual game-plans then they should be able to re-establish themselves as a solid unit.

“It’s about spending time at the crease, batting time. A lot of it comes down to how good your game-plans are and how long you can stay in that plan. You need to stay in your plan for as long as possible, always looking to be positive, but if they don’t bowl bad balls then you have to be disciplined enough to not chase things. It comes down to what the conditions are and what the bowling attack allows.

“Hopefully there will be a few bad balls that we can put away and if we operate at a good intensity then we will be able to put away those bad balls when they come. The Sri Lankan attack is mostly similar to last time and they were certainly a handful, but we have put plans together to hopefully combat them this time. We need to bat long periods and put them under pressure,” Markram said.

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