South Africa prepare for spin-slaught in Tests against Pakistan

South Africa are expecting a slew of spin when they begin their World Test Championship (WTC) title defence in Pakistan later this week and stand-in captain Aiden Markram is confident his players are ready.

Though this South African unit has not played red-ball cricket together since the previous WTC final in June, some of their players were involved in a two-Test series in Zimbabwe in June-July and others have been at the county championship. Their main preparation took place over the last two days at a training camp in Pretoria, where they tried to replicate the home advantage Markram believes Pakistan have every right to exploit.

"If it's your home game, you can pretty much prepare whatever wicket you'd like to prepare. That's how I see it," Markram said ahead of the team's departure on Monday. " Ultimately, if it's going to be extreme like it was in the English series, then it's going to be difficult for both teams from a batting point of view. For us as a squad, we've just got to be happy with what we have, whatever the conditions look like and to back whoever it is on the day to get the job done. So I'm not too fussed by it."

Markram's reference to "the English series," harks back to this time last year, when Pakistan hosted England. After losing the first Test, Pakistan won the next two on pitches that turned square after using everything from industrial fans and heaters to windbreakers to dry out the surfaces. Those games were played in Multan and Rawalpindi. South Africa will play in Lahore and Rawalpindi, where 29 of 31 wickets in the England Test fell to spin.

No pitch in South Africa can behave that way but they tried at the High Performance Centre. "There's three pitches that are spinning quite a bit and two out of those three are really exaggerated," Markram said. "The one that's a little bit in between is still sharp spin but slightly easier to bat on. And then we've got one strip in the middle as well where it's pretty normal. We try to keep it as dead as possible but it's not always that easy, just to have the ball squat a bit low. It's difficult to do that on the Highveld, but we've tried our best. We're trying to tick all the boxes."

South Africa have also picked a spin-heavy squad, which includes left-arm spinner Senuran Muthusamy and offspinners Simon Harmer and Prenelan Subrayen. "They're all quite different. If you look at the two off-spinners to start with, Simon and Subs, especially having faced them now where it is spinning, it's two completely different challenges they throw at you. That's something great to have as a squad," Markram said. "You don't really want similar types of spinners. They are each quite different, different paces, different types of spin in terms of side spin and overspin and stuff like that, which reacts differently off the wickets. They'll play a massive role for us there if what we're expecting is going to be the case."

South Africa's first-choice spinner Keshav Maharaj will only join the squad for the second Test, when they will have four specialist spin options. They will not, however, enjoy the return of their regular Test captain Temba Bavuma, who was ruled out of the series with a calf injury. While Markram is used to standing in for Bavuma, and did on South Africa's tour to Bangladesh last year, making up for Bavuma's place in the batting order is not as simple.

As South Africa's leading run-scorer of the last WTC, Bavuma provides stability and experience at No.4, which South Africa will have to find elsewhere. One replacement option is Dewald Brevis, who debuted in Zimbabwe and has an aggressive approach across formats.

"He'd definitely be an option, especially with the way he plays spin," Markram said. "If the conditions are going to be exaggerated, he can quickly change the momentum of the game doing what he does and playing the way he does. He'll be a definite consideration."

He won't be the only one. South Africa have also recalled Zubayr Hamza, who recently played for the A side against New Zealand A and scored a second-innings hundred in the first match, and WTC squad member Tony de Zorzi, who proved his credentials in the subcontinent with 177 against Bangladesh last year. "He played incredibly well in Bangladesh and scored big runs there, where it was also quite challenging. So I don't think it's necessarily that Dewald is a dead-given straight swap, but I'm very sure he'll be in the conversation."

The first Test of the series starts in Lahore on Sunday.