Dawid Malan, England's former No.1-ranked T20I batter, retires from international cricket

Malan, who played 22 Tests, 30 ODIs and 62 T20Is, is one of only two England batters (alongside Jos Buttler) to have made centuries in all three international formats. However, he had not featured in an England squad since the 50-over World Cup in India last year, and confirmed his decision after his omission from the forthcoming white-ball series against Australia.

Despite announcing himself with a free-flowing innings of 78 from 44 on his T20I debut against South Africa in 2017, Malan’s initial breakthrough with England came on the following winter’s Ashes tour, where he made his only Test hundred, 140 from 227 balls, in partnership with Jonny Bairstow at Perth.

However, it was in the T20I format that he truly made his name, most particularly in the aftermath of England’s ODI World Cup victory in 2019, when he forced his way into the team’s 20-over plans through his sheer weight of run-making.

In September 2020, he reached the top of the ICC’s batting rankings for T20I cricket, and the following March, he became the fastest men’s player to reach 1000 runs in the format, from just 24 innings, all but one of which had been at least double-figures. He was also a T20 World Cup winner in Australia in 2022, although he missed the knock-out stages after tearing his groin in the field against Sri Lanka.

Due to the success of the 50-over squad, Malan took longer to break into the ODI team – despite the prevailing sense that it was the format for which he was best suited, with his tendency to begin an innings cautiously before unfurling his full range of strokes at the back end often attracting criticism during his T20I performances.

Nevertheless, he seized his chance when it came, scoring five ODI hundreds in the space of 15 innings between June 2022 and September 2023, to make an unequivocal case to replace England’s incumbent opener, Jason Roy, in the 2023 World Cup squad. He then added a sixth hundred in the second match of the tournament to guide England to victory over Bangladesh in Dharamsala, but he could not survive the fall-out from the team’s disappointing overall campaign.

Speaking to The Times, Malan said that he had “exceeded all expectations of myself in white-ball formats”, but admitted that his inability to forge a more consistent Test career would be a regret. Ten of his 22 appearances came on consecutive tours of Australia in 2017-18 and 2021-22, where his average of 33.00 is bettered only by Alastair Cook, Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow among regular England performers of the past decade. However, he never played the format again after England’s 146-run defeat at Hobart in January 2022.

“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.”

Malan is likely to be in high demand on the T20 franchise circuit with his England career behind him. He was most recently in action for Oval Invincibles, helping the team to victory in the Men’s Hundred, two years after he was part of the Trent Rockets squad that claimed the 2022 title. Last winter, he helped Sunrisers Eastern Cape win the second season of the SA20, and was also in action for Multan Sultans in the PSL.

Source: ESPN Crickinfo