Image Credit- Getty
At the age of 37, England’s previous No. 1 T20I hitter, Dawid Malan, has declared his retirement from international cricket.
Along with Jos Buttler, Malan is one of just two England men’s hitters to have scored hundreds of runs in each of the three international formats. Malan played in 22 Tests, 30 ODIs, and 62 T20Is. But since the 50-over World Cup in India last year, he had not been included in an England squad. He announced his decision after being left out of the next white-ball series against Australia.
Malan made his T20I debut against South Africa in 2017 and impressed with a flowing innings of 78 from 44. However, it was during the winter Ashes tour the following year that he made his first breakthrough with England, making his only Test century of 140 from 227 balls at Perth with Jonny Bairstow.
But he really rose to prominence in the T20I format, especially after England won the ODI World Cup in 2019. His run-scoring prowess, which included a 48-ball century at Napier during the team’s winter tour of New Zealand, forced him into the team’s 20-over plans.
He rose to the top of the ICC T20I batting rankings in September 2020, and in March of the same year, he became the first men’s player to amass 1000 runs in the format in just 24 innings, with all but one of those innings being at least double digits. In 2022, he also won the T20 World Cup in Australia, but he was unable to advance past the group stages due to a groin rupture sustained during a game against Sri Lanka.
Malan took longer to establish himself in the ODI team due to the 50-over squad’s success, despite the general belief that this was the format for which he was most suited. His propensity to play cautiously at the start of an innings before unleashing his entire repertoire of strokes towards the end of it frequently garnered criticism during his T20I performances.
But he took advantage of the opportunity when it presented itself, amassing five hundreds in Twenty20 Twenty Twenty between June 2022 and September 2023, to solidify his claim to take Jason Roy’s place as England’s opener in the 2023 World Cup team. at the tournament’s second match, he scored a sixth century to help England defeat Bangladesh at Dharamsala. However, he was unable to withstand the fallout from the team’s dismal campaign as a whole.
Malan acknowledged that he had “exceeded all expectations of myself in white-ball formats” in an interview with The Times, but he also acknowledged that he would regret not being able to carve out a more reliable Test career. Of his 22 appearances, ten came during back-to-back tours of Australia in 2017–18 and 2021–22. Of regular England performers over the previous ten years, only Alastair Cook, Joe Root, and Jonny Bairstow have higher averages than his 33.00. Nevertheless, following England’s 146-run loss at Hobart in January 2022, he never again participated in the format.
“Test cricket was always the pinnacle for me growing up,” he said. “At times I played well but in between just wasn’t good enough or consistent enough, which was disappointing because I felt I was a better player than that.
“I took all three formats extremely seriously but the intensity of Test cricket was something else: five days plus the days building up. I’m a big trainer; I love hitting lots of balls and I’d train hard in the build-up, and then the days were long and intense. You can’t switch off. I found it very mentally draining, especially the long Test series that I played, where my performances dropped off from the third or fourth Test onwards.”
“But, you know, on the field I always did what I felt was right to win a game for the team. I never walked off the field if I got runs not caring about whether we had won or lost. It was always about winning and I’d always question myself as to whether I’d made the right decisions on the field to do that.”
With his England career behind him, Malan could be in high demand on the T20 franchise circuit. Two years after playing for the Trent Rockets in the 2022 championship, he most recently played for the Oval Invincibles, leading the team to victory in the Men’s Hundred. He participated for Multan Sultans in the PSL and assisted Sunrisers Eastern Cape in winning the second season of the SA20 last winter.