Marnus Labuschagne begins preparing for spin challenge in Pakistan

Brisbane, Feb 21: Australia's star batsman Marnus Labuschagne has started preparing for the upcoming tour of Pakistan and the right-handed batsman has started practising ways to counter spin in the sub-continent conditions.

After thrashing England to retain the Ashes last month, Australia are now the number 1 ranked team in the world. However, the Aussies are touring Pakistan after a gap of 24 years and Labuschagne rightly refers to the challenge of playing there as a big unknown. The South Africa-born naturalised Australian has emerged as one of their premier batsmen in Test match cricket along with his mentor Steve Smith.

So it was no surprise that Labuschagne consulted Smith before preparing a batting track on a mat with aluminium and metal pieces to simulate spin conditions in his backyard.

The Australian had posted a video of this practice wicket on social media which garnered a fair amount of traction, mostly appreciating his innovative ways to prepare.

In a video shared on Twitter, the Aussie is seen playing in his home backyard. In the video, Labuschagne recreated a surface akin to spin-friendly pitches in the sub-continent.

The video shows a rubber mat with aluminium and metal sheets taped to it that is cut into pieces in order to replicate the cracks that appear on the subcontinent pitches as the game proceeds.

"Originally I had bigger sheets on there," Labuschagne told reporters in Brisbane on Monday. Labuschagne also revealed his chat with Steve Smith and the latter's inputs that proved valuable for recreating such a pitch.

"Then I was actually on the phone to Steve and he was like 'Nah, nah, nah, that's no good'. You've got to actually cut the pieces up so they're small pieces so you can't really predict at all what the wicket is going to do," he added.

"So, I cut them up in smaller pieces, put them around and tried to line it up so that if one hit the aluminum or the metal it would skid on and hit the stumps... then one would spin," he said.

(With agency inputs)