T20 World Cup | You don’t want to jinx anything: South Africa captain Markram ahead of Canada game

South Africa's Aiden Markram emphasizes caution ahead of their T20 World Cup opener against Canada, highlighting the unpredictability of matches.

South Africa captain Aiden Markram is in no mood to take Canada lightly in their T20 World Cup opener on Monday (February 8, 2026), insisting that he’s just looking for a positive start to their campaign in Ahmedabad.

The two teams will face each other in their opening Group B match.

They may be considered one of the favourites, but Markram said the close matches in the last two days already indicated that no team can take any opposition lightly.

“You don’t want to jinx anything. We’ve already seen some close games, and it doesn’t look like there will be any straightforward or easy matches. But I have faith in our team. If we put together a really good game of cricket, we give ourselves a strong chance of a good result,” Markram said at the pre-match press conference on Sunday (February 8, 2026).

“That’s something you want to do in a competition like this; you want to start well and carry that momentum forward. So that’s where a lot of the focus has been for us as a group, and hopefully we can put together a really good performance.” Markram said the gap in terms of performance in the T20 format between top teams and associate nations has narrowed considerably, resulting in upsets and that’s why there is no room for being complacent.

“If you look at the games that have already happened and at previous World Cups, there have been upsets. The gap between Associate nations and the other countries has become much smaller. In this format, it just takes one or two players having a really good day for an upset to happen. The Associate teams have been playing really well. Even at the start of this World Cup, we’ve seen some close games that could have gone either way. I think that, on its own, is quite exciting to watch,” he said.