South African-born batsman Marnus Labuschagne has insisted his ‘allegiance solely lies with Australia’, ahead of October’s Test series against Pakistan.

Labuschagne was born in Klerksdorp before immigrating to Australia.

‘The boys give me plenty of stick, but I’m very excited to have the opportunity to play for Australia.

‘Dad, Andre, worked for a mining company in South Africa and they branched out into Australia.

‘I went to an Afrikaans school until grade three and when I came here, I went straight into grade five.’

‘I had barely enough English to get around the playground to socialise. In terms of learning English in class, I did it from scratch.

‘The younger I was, the better I transitioned, but it was still very difficult in terms of starting to learn a whole new language at the age of 10.

‘It was tough but I’ve done all right now.

‘My allegiance solely lies with Australia, there’s no doubt about that.’

This year’s string of solid performances for Australia have seen him elevated to the Test squad, which is minus batsmen Cameron Bancroft, Steven Smith and David Warner.

Warner, Smith and Bancroft are serving Cricket Australia-imposed bans after the ball-tampering saga that rocked the series against South Africa earlier this year.

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