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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.

Ravindra Jadeja has been building a case to be one of the best allrounders in the game. A four-for to follow a hundred against West Indies to start the new home season was just the latest evidence he offered in favour of that argument. On the back of his 104 not out and 4 for 54, India completed an innings win with two-and-a-half days to spare.A proud record stood tall between February 22, 2013 and October 25, 2024. It buckled 24 hours later. India lost a Test series on home soil for the first time in nearly 12 years. Many of the players who had contributed to that run are now retired, including Virat Kohli, R Ashwin and Cheteshwar Pujara. But Jadeja remains.He was there when India began that run against Australia in Chennai. He was there when New Zealand broke them last year in Pune. And he was there once again, lifting them back up against West Indies now. At 36 years old, it is unclear how much cricket is left in him but it was poetic that in the first of 66 Tests that India had to play at home without R Ashwin, his old pal came up with a hundred and a four-for.ESPNcricinfo Ltd

Alick Athanaze carried the West Indies flag, showing why he is rated as a good player of spin. He picked up length well. He was decisive going forward or back. And he remembered to put pressure back, two rock-solid reverse sweeps for four and one sumptuous cover drive for three highlighted his process. All of those scoring shots were against half-volleys that were well wide of the stumps. This is the judgment and the competence that convinced the coach Daren Sammy and the management to bring him back into the Test side.India, though, kept placing new threats in front of Athanaze. Jasprit Bumrah hit him on the helmet. Washington Sundar tested him with the ball turning away. They were waiting for Athanaze to be just slightly off with his process and eventually, after 73 balls, he was, closing the face of the bat, baited by an offbreak that pitched on middle. Washington took a simple catch, which then led to a symbolic representation of West Indies’ batting in this Test.Jomel Warrican tried to impose himself on Mohammed Siraj, swinging as hard as he could, only for his bat to fly out of his grip and land at square leg. The ball meanwhile settled in mid-off’s hands.Alick Athanaze offered some resilience for West Indies•Getty Images

West Indies are a side still building its best batters. Ahead of this tour, they were shorn of two of their best bowlers. This informed the challenge they could pose. They are struggling to find a better opener than John Campbell, 32, who is the third-most experienced player in this XI. He has 23 caps and in all that time, he has no centuries. Even in first-class cricket, after 101 matches, he has only nine centuries. In Ahmedabad, he fell for 8 and 14. The only slightly younger Tagenarine Chanderpaul finished with 0 and 8. Top-order returns like that just won’t do.Jadeja is sometimes accused of being that left-arm spinner who just fires the ball in and lets the pitch do its work. But he knows how to work batters out too. He saw Brandon King lunging forward to try and smother the turn and that helped him once. He hit a crisp cover drive for four. It also led to his downfall as Jadeja recalibrated his flight. It was still full so it triggered King’s instinct to get on the front foot. But he had no way of getting to the pitch of this one. Having committed to the shot, he ended up vulnerable to the turn and presented a straightforward catch to slip. All this happened in the space of two overs. In that small period of time, Jadeja turned what the batter thought was a strength into a weakness.Siraj was the other bowler among the wickets, taking five or more over the course of a home Test for the first time.West Indies lost 10 wickets in two sessions on the first day. They did it again on the third day. Only two players got into the 30s. Only two faced 50 or more balls. They have five days to address these problems before the start of the second game in Delhi. The wait to win a Test match against India in India, which is into its 31st year, continues.