To cricket now, where South Africa and Pakistan will face off in a much-anticipated series starting on Boxing Day. The Proteas are eager to improve against the visitors who recently lost to New Zealand in the United Arab Emirates. CGTN's Sias du Plessis has more.

It is the first time the Pakistan head coach will face his former team, Mickey Arthur, who left the South Africa post in 2010, returns for the first time on South African soil with a young and talented squad from the sub-continent who the 50-year-old believes will give their hosts a stern challenge.

MICKEY ARTHUR PAKISTAN COACH "I'm working even harder here, I won't make any secret of it, I'd love to come back here with a Pakistan team that is very talented and win so we going to be working extremely hard over the next couple of days, what I can assure you, this is a Pakistan team that is worth coming to watch, it is a very exciting team and will be putting on a good show."

Ottis Gibson and Arthur know each other well having played together at domestic level in South Africa, but the West Indian says there will be no love lost on the field and that his team's objectives for the series are clear.

OTTIS GIBSON SOUTH AFRICA COACH "We've played some good test cricket at home obviously Sri Lanka was disappointing but the last two series we played at home against India, the number one team at the time and Australia, we won, those were big series and we expect that we are going to try and win both the home series that we have against Pakistan first and Sri Lanka later on in the summer."

The Proteas coach says he has no concerns over the form of his batting unit and believes that in South African conditions his batsmen will produce the runs.

OTTIS GIBSON SOUTH AFRICA COACH "Guys will be out of form and that happens in cricket, guys will be out of form and so on but the core of the team in terms of batting is pretty much the same with Faf (du Plessis) in there Hash (Amla) those experienced guys will know that if we are going to win the 5 test matches that we want to do that is going to be our goal we will need a lot of runs from our best players."

SIAS DU PLESSIS JOHANNESBURG "This series will see two extremely talented sides with points to prove do battle, Pakistan's head coach would love nothing more than to get one over his former team, especially considering that the visitors have only won two tests here since 1994, while for Gibson, winning the series is the priority with an eye on reclaiming the number one ranking in test cricket, Sias du Plessis, CGTN, Johannesburg."