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South Africa’s stand-in captain Aiden Markram didn’t think that the opportunity to play in the World Test Championship final would add any extra pressure going into the second Test against Bangladesh that starts in Chattogram Tuesday.  

The Proteas, who are now at the fifth of the table, got a boost after India’s defeat against New Zealand in the first two Tests of the series. South Africa’s PCT is currently 47.62, and they’ve got five matches remaining, including this one. 

After this match against Bangladesh, they will play four Tests at home — two each against Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Four wins and a draw in the next five would all but assure their spot in the final, which will be held at Lord’s in London in June next year.

The win at Mirpur was the first in 10 years for the Proteas in the sub-continent. Now, as the second match against Bangladesh becomes more important, there might be some added pressure on them. 

But Markram didn’t see it that way. While talking to the reporters in the pre-match press conference, he said, ‘It’s just an exciting opportunity that could be. So that’s almost how we’re trying to view it. We probably still need to win a lot of the remaining matches, and we’ve got five left until that. Five Test matches is a lot of cricket to be played.’

‘So that’s pretty much where we are at now. We hopefully can go session by session, game by game. We hopefully give ourselves a good chance. But yeah, excited about what could be moving forward’, he added. 

Markram is also enjoying the stand-in captaincy role; he got the job after Temba Bavuma was ruled out. 

‘It’s been brief and short, but it’s really cool. It’s always a privilege to captain your own country, especially in a Test match. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it’, he said. 

He also credited his players. ‘Obviously conditions have been quite far into us for South Africans, and it’s been nice to try to find ways to impact the game from a captaincy point of view.’

‘But ultimately it’s your players that make the biggest difference. And we’ve got guys that put their hands up in the first Test match that were able to get us into a really good position to win, and then that focus will be pretty much the same in this Test match.’