Dawid Malan: My England career is over – I gave everything I had (original) (raw)

For all athletes, whether great, good, average or somewhere in between, the realisation eventually arrives that the sporting world moves on. For Dawid Malan, the Yorkshire and England batsman, that came some time ago, having not been involved in one-day squads since the World Cup in India, but there is a finality to it now, with the announcement of his international retirement.

It has been a fine career — 22 Tests, 30 ODIs and 62 T20Is — full of striving and filled with success as well as a share of disappointment. He underperformed in Tests, exceeded expectations as a T20 player and was underutilised in 50-over cricket, the format at which he was most accomplished, because of the strength of England’s side under Eoin Morgan. He remains one of only two England men (Jos Buttler is the other) to have scored centuries in all three formats.

He looks back with an honesty now that comes from the detachment of knowing that part of his life is over. In the middle of it, desperate to succeed, things are not always so clear cut — if only we could all go back and have another go with everything we had learnt from experience. Malan, who turns 37 next week, is certain that he could have asked no more of himself, which is the best way to finish.

In fact, he thinks he probably asked too much of himself at times and struggled to find the right balance, especially in Test cricket, which, he maintains, is the hardest format to crack. “Test cricket was always the pinnacle for me growing up,” he says. “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. Then again, I exceeded all expectations of myself in white-ball formats.

“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.”

This search for balance while trying to become the best you can be, trying to maintain perspective while giving your all, is something he has discussed with his county team-mate Harry Brook. “One of the biggest mistakes I made was to keep playing, playing, playing. Brookie is like me in that he trains exceptionally hard and is clear on what he wants to do. My only advice to him would be to find balance. Be fully committed to England and if it means missing a franchise tournament or whatever, so be it.

“I didn’t have a central contract when I was playing Test cricket, so it was a little different. I came back from a long winter with England in Australia and straight into county cricket, with the pressure to score runs to keep your place. And it can become a vicious cycle then, constantly fighting, playing and training at the same time. I think I got the balance wrong at times.”

There is nothing more intense for an England cricketer than an Ashes series in Australia, and Malan was involved in two of those, in 2017-18 and 2021-22, scoring a brilliant hundred in Perth in the first of them. “I proved to myself that I could do it against the best in that innings and that series,” he says. “They were intense tours, especially the second one which came on the back of the T20 World Cup and five or six weeks of quarantine. I had nothing left in the tank by the end.”

The last time I chatted to him was in Hobart, for the final Test of that 2021-22 series, and it was a reminder that there is always a bit more going on than you realise. “My wife, Claire, was expecting six weeks after the tour, but I got a call on the second day that she was going into hospital. I spent the whole day waiting, then got a call at two o’clock the following morning to say our daughter, Summer, had been born. The following day I got banged on the head by Cameron Green, then bowled, and that was the last of my Test career.”

The memories are even more uplifting in white-ball cricket. Malan was part of Morgan’s golden generation, central to the T20 World Cup campaigns of 2021 and 2022, although he missed the World Cup final in 2022 after tearing his groin. In T20 cricket he was ranked the world’s best between September 2020 and November 2021, but, despite this, it always felt like there was a battle for public and media acceptance.

“What’s the best way to put it? I always felt there was a ‘but’. ‘He got runs, but . . .’ ‘He did this, but . . .’ You’d win the game, but . . . I’m not asking for sympathy but I could never quite understand why there was a ‘but’. It wore me down a bit. It’s also partly what drove me to be successful, that I felt I had to prove myself all the time and I never took anything for granted.”

Malan credits Morgan with being a great help. “Eoin was brilliant at shutting out the noise and silencing it as well. If things were being written or said, he would openly back me. He’d say to me, ‘If there was anything wrong with the way you’re playing, I’ll be the first one to tell you. You can read what you want, but I’d advise you not to. I’ll be the one to tell if there is anything wrong.’”

This happened only once. Having scored a 48-ball T20 hundred in Napier in 2019 Malan did not attempt to run a bye off the last ball of the innings — memories of Mitch Santner ducking the final ball of the New Zealand innings in the 2019 World Cup final show how important a single run can be. “He was as good as his word. He said, ‘This is how we do it.’ I really respected him for that.”

In his early days in county cricket Malan had a reputation of being demanding, a tag often attached to those who are single-minded in their approach. “That side of me is what helped me be successful in international cricket. I was very competitive; I wanted to get the best out of myself and the people around me and wanted to win.

Malan scored 16 half-centuries in addition to his one hundred in the England T20 side

Malan scored 16 half-centuries in addition to his one hundred in the England T20 side

MARC ASPLAND/NMP POOL

“I came over to Middlesex as a young kid from South Africa. No family here, no friends, nothing. The only thing I had was a two-year contract. Training was a big thing for me; I wanted to hit balls until the sun went down. I’ve always believed that the more work I’d put in, the more I’d get out of the game. So I’d always be forthright about that, telling people, ‘This is what I want today, this is how I want to go about it.’

“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.”

Having made the decision at the end of last year to step away from first-class cricket with Yorkshire this summer to find some balance — something he may yet return to now that his England career is over, along with continued engagements in white-ball and franchise cricket — Malan spent the early months of the season as part of the club’s coaching staff, working with the likes of Joe Root and Brook.

“As things turned out, I had a bit more time early this summer and really enjoyed the two months of coaching. Mind you, Rooty and Brookie absolutely tore my [throwing] arm to bits. I think they used me to make sure they got back what I had taken from all the coaches in my career, so there’s a bit of karma on me for that.”