England batter Dawid Malan announces retirement from international cricket
England's Dawid Malan announces retirement at the age of 37
The England left-handed batter Dawid Malan has announced his retirement from international cricket at the age of 37. The former No. 1 ranked T20I batter played 22 Tests, 30 ODIs and 62 T20Is for England in his career. He is one among the only 2 England batters in the men’s team, alongside Jos Buttler to have scored centuries across all the 3 formats in international cricket. Malan confirmed his decision after not getting picked for the upcoming white-ball series against Australia.
Malan flourished the most in the T20I format as on his debut, he played a fantastic knock of 78 runs on debut against South Africa in 2017. He forced his way into the T20I squad due to the sheer weight of his run-making after England’s 2019 ODI World Cup format.
One of the best knocks of his career came in a T20I against New Zealand in Napier where he smashed a 48-ball century. He became the ICC men’s No. 1 ranked batter in T20Is in September 2020 and, after that, in March, he became the fastest men’s player to reach 1000 runs in the shortest format of the game from just 24 innings.
Malan suffered a tear in his groin and in England’s T20 World Cup 2022 match against Sri Lanka and thus, he was ruled out for the knockout matches. However, he still was a part of the England squad that went on to eventually win the T20 tournament.
Malan continued his great form in the ODIs, scoring 5 hundreds in 15 ODI matches. He went on to replace Jason Roy as England’s opener in the ODI World Cup 2023 squad. The left-hander would score an amazing ton against Bangladesh but wasn’t able to save his side from getting knocked out in the group stages itself.
Despite his white-ball success, Malan, who was recently a part of the Oval Invincibles’ winning campaign for The Hundred admitted that he wanted to do well for his country in the longest format as well.
“Test cricket was always the pinnacle for me growing up,” he told The Times. “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,” Malan said.
“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 during the build-up. 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,” Malan added.