30 September 2019, by: Prasenjit Dey  of  CricXtasy

Aiden Markram – Indian series represents big Test for talented opener

The way South Africa performed as a unit in the T20Is and drew the series level with a fighting performance in the final T20I at Bengaluru was commendable.

But things are going to get a lot tougher in the upcoming Test series. The Indian batsmen and spinners boast of a superb record at home, so rest assured that they are going to be at their best once again. And this is where the inexperience of the South African side comes as a cause of concern.

10 out of the 15 players in South Africa’s Test squad for this series are yet to play a Test match in India. Three of those 10 players are yet to make their Test debut whereas four of them haven’t even reached the double-digit mark in the matches column yet.

So it is quite natural for these players to look up to experienced players like Faf du Plessis, Dean Elgar and Quinton de Kock for inspiration to deal with this challenge as the trio has a good measure of these conditions.

However, Aiden Markram, still in the inexperienced category, has been a terrific performer for the Proteas ever since his debut and he can also give them a fresh first-timer’s perspective of dealing with these challenging Indian conditions, which would, in turn, be a more effective learning method for them.

These conditions are fairly new at the international level for Markram too. But he showed that he is more than prepared for the challenge with a century in the warm-up match against the Board President’s XI and a century prior to that at Mysore against India A.

His aggressive stroke-play was the highlight of his knocks and the way he used his feet against the spinners inspired confidence in the South African camp as well. His second century came off just 118 deliveries and that sums up how merciless he was on the Indian bowlers.

Moreover, the 24-year-old’s record in Test cricket thus far speaks for itself. His tally of 1358 runs in 31 innings is second in the list of most runs by an opener in Tests since his debut. Only Dimuth Karunaratne has more runs (1546) than Markram during this period.

Not only that, but Markram’s average of 43.80 has also been the second-best among openers who have scored at least 500 runs during this period. And his overall strike-rate of 64.26 is also the best among the same category of batsmen during the same time-frame.

So these numbers suggest how dominant he’s been as a batsman. He likes to assert his authority at the crease with his aggressive strokeplay. Markram is strong on the off-side, particularly on the back-foot, and likes to score runs behind the square on both sides of the wicket.

Yes, 27 of his 31 innings so far have come in South African conditions but that doesn’t take anything away from him. He has scored the hard runs against sides with good bowling attacks like India, Australia and Pakistan. And it is more than guaranteed that he would be hungry to score more of those runs in this series against India once again.

Markram has always been regarded as one of South Africa’s future stars ever since he led them to the 2014 U-19 World Cup triumph. He has always been seen as a future skipper, one who would excel in all-formats and could lead by example.

Although he hasn’t quite been able to carry his List-A form forward into ODI cricket (Markram’s ODI average of 27.95 after 26 games is a far cry from his List-A average of 44.30 after 65 games), he has excelled as a batsman in the purest format of the game. His excellent Test average of 43.80 is almost similar to his overall first-class average of 43.82. And this shows how busy he has been when it comes to scoring runs in Test cricket.

Moreover, he had quite a disappointing outing in the World Cup which was quite disastrous for South Africa themselves and that has made him even more hungrier for quality runs. So he would be eager to make amends for that with a good string of performances in the high-profile Test series against India.

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