The Proteas aim to use the potential hostility of the home crowd to their advantage when they challenge the West Indies in the first Test in Trinidad and Tobago starting on Wednesday, seamer Lungi Ngidi said.
Ngidi was speaking from the Brian Lara Stadium where SA and a Windies Championship XI played to a draw in an unofficial four-day encounter.
He said their opponents at the weekend were a tough nut to crack and expected a similar fight from the senior side in their opening encounter at Queen’s Park Oval.
“It is exactly what I was expecting, [there were] no surprises, they’re a good team.
“It is always competitive especially if teams are playing at home, they have the crowd behind them but we are obviously here to compete — they will put their best foot forward, and so will we,” Ngidi said after the match.
The right-arm seamer took three of the four wickets to fall in the second innings as a stalemate was reached around lunchtime on the final day on Saturday.
Wickets in the first innings were spread across the bowling attack, with Kagiso Rabada taking 3/47, while spinners Dane Piedt and Keshav Maharaj took 3/41 and 2/82 respectively as Dane Paterson and Migael Pretorius chipped in with one apiece to restrict the home side to 397 all out.
After the Proteas posted 408/9 with a lead of 11, Ngidi and Piedt struck early on in the second innings to have the Windies on 32/4 before reaching the lunch break on 46/4 when the decision was taken to share honours.
Ngidi said executing their plans under pressure and adapting to different match situations from Wednesday would be vital in getting the upper hand over their hosts.
“Any conditions you come across [will require] that you find a way.
“We didn’t know what to expect, it turned out on the slower side so we had to adapt our plans to what we had in front of us, we did pretty well and it is something we will look to do in the first Test as well,” the right arm seamer said.
Having assessed conditions, Ngidi said the main objective was to find some rhythm in the first innings, which he then tried to work into the game plan he had for himself going into the second innings.
“I was told I would be taking the new ball, which changed things around in the team for us to adapt to bowing at different stages in the innings.
“The ball seemed to be doing a bit more for me than in the first innings, so I tried to capitalize on that and use the conditions as best I could.
“In Test cricket, the ball is going to swing, so you learn from a young age how to try to control it, it’s about finding an area on the wicket to hit if it is swinging, and if not, then finding a different area to hit,” he said.