Aiden Markram previews South Africa's t20 world cup clash with Sri Lanka

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Aiden Markram previews South Africa's t20 world cup clash with Sri Lanka  02/06/2024  Nassau County International Cricket Stadium, Texas, USA

Transcript

00:00 Good day, everyone.

00:03 Thank you for joining us for the first pre-match press conference of the ICC Men's T20 World

00:08 Cup at Nassau County.

00:11 We've got Aidan Markram from South Africa at the top table.

00:15 I will hand over to Lucy, who will then take over.

00:19 Thanks, Aidan.

00:21 How do you look at your chances this World Cup?

00:28 Feeling quietly confident.

00:31 Obviously it's a World Cup, there's some really good teams here, but we feel that if we're

00:37 on our form and playing at our best ability, we're able to compete with anyone here and

00:42 beat anyone here.

00:43 So putting a lot of focus on that in terms of putting focus on ourselves and seeing ultimately

00:51 where it gets us.

00:52 But certainly here to lift the trophy.

00:55 I'm sure every other team is also here to lift the trophy.

00:58 So we'll see at the end of it, but quietly confident that we have what it takes.

01:04 Can you look back at the time when you first got the captaincy for the Proteas in 2018

01:09 and you were yourself a youngster and the team was missing quite a few players?

01:13 And just that experience when you lost both the series to India at home, how was that

01:20 experience like as a captain back then?

01:22 It was fantastic to be honest.

01:25 Completely unexpected obviously getting the captaincy then, but the learning that was

01:30 able to take place from going through that experience of that series was great.

01:36 Obviously at the time it was not ideal, having lost badly, but you look at it in hindsight

01:43 and you almost become grateful for that.

01:45 So like I mentioned, learned quite a bit through that series and had some really awesome senior

01:53 players guiding me while I was out there as well, which sort of helps you grow a lot as

01:58 a captain and as a player.

02:00 Could you just expand on being grateful for that experience?

02:06 I would expect somebody to almost consider it as a chastening experience, maybe even

02:13 regret taking it so early?

02:15 No, never.

02:17 I would never regret taking the captaincy for your national team.

02:24 But like I mentioned, at the moment it was obviously not the best series for us as a

02:29 team but if you look at it in hindsight, that's why I'm grateful because I was able to learn.

02:34 Five years later when you took over the captaincy, how different are you as a captain from then?

02:41 I feel slightly different.

02:43 You learn as you prod along and find out things about yourself that help you ideally be a

02:52 better captain for the team.

02:54 But I haven't gone too far away from my basic values as a person and try to keep that close

03:01 to me over the time.

03:04 You fine-tune your way around things as you get more experience.

03:09 So it has helped me since then, since 2018.

03:15 Even getting to a tournament like this, you're still going to take lots of learnings from

03:18 it.

03:19 One or two big lessons you might have learnt over this period as a captain?

03:24 Back then I was quite young so being able to tell the difference between being a batter

03:31 and a captain.

03:32 So when you're a batter, you're just a batter for the team.

03:34 You can't captain in any way while you're batting.

03:37 So that was one massive learning and then naturally dealing with stuff off the field

03:41 in a more open-minded and calmer way.

03:45 I think when you're young you can get defensive quite quickly but you realise that it comes

03:50 with the territory, it comes with the responsibility of being a captain and taking that on board

03:56 as best you can.

03:57 There's no World Cup where South Africa do not go in as one of the favourites to win.

04:03 But not having won a World title so far, what kind of pressure does it add to you whenever

04:10 you go into a new competition?

04:13 For the time being we're trying to achieve something we haven't achieved before.

04:18 So I don't think that brings too much extra pressure.

04:21 I think it brings a bit more excitement and energy to the team.

04:24 But we'd love to get that first elusive one of course and like I mentioned earlier, I

04:29 believe that we have the team to do so.

04:32 But I don't think it adds too much more pressure.

04:36 But guys are definitely really hungry to get that first one.

04:42 Just about the game tomorrow, a lot of unknown in terms of conditions both on the pitch and

04:48 the outfield.

04:49 How do you prepare for just completely new grounds?

04:54 It's always interesting.

04:57 Definitely on the day you have to assess really quickly and from there develop plans and tactics

05:03 that can hopefully help us do well.

05:05 But if you look at it from a bigger picture point of view it's quite an exciting day.

05:12 Never thought you'd be playing in a World Cup in New York.

05:15 So something to be really excited about.

05:18 And from a conditions point of view we'll have to assess really quickly and hopefully

05:23 that's enough for us to play some good cricket tomorrow.

05:26 Also early morning starts are quite rare, almost never in T20 cricket.

05:31 How do you approach that differently?

05:33 Yeah it is different.

05:35 We're used to mostly playing in the evenings.

05:37 But I suppose we've gotten a bit of a routine since we've been here of waking up early,

05:44 having things to do together as a team early in the morning.

05:47 So I think by now we're pretty used to waking up early.

05:52 I think because you're at a World Cup naturally, once you wake up in the morning you'll be

05:56 switched on immediately because of the excitement and the energy around the World Cup.

06:00 Just finally, it's a bit weird that you're not training at the actual venue before the

06:06 match.

06:07 Any reasons?

06:08 I've got no idea to be honest.

06:12 Training facility, yeah it's a beautiful training facility and we're allowed to do our skills

06:19 work here.

06:20 We're going to get to the stadium a bit later and run around, do some fielding, have a look

06:24 at the pitch and the conditions and stuff like that.

06:27 You would have preferred to be there, right?

06:30 It's hard to say because I'm not sure what's there because I haven't been.

06:34 This facility is incredible to be honest.

06:37 We don't mind training here either.

06:40 Thank you very much.

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