Dawid Malan announces retirement from International cricket

The South Africa-born English batter Dawid Malan has announced his retirement from all formats of international cricket. 

Malan played 22 Tests, 30 ODIs and 62 T20Is for England. He has more than 1,000 runs in each format and still holds the record for the fastest 1,000 runs in T20Is (24 innings). He is also the second English batter, apart from Jos Buttler, to score a century in all three formats. 

A late bloomer, Malan began playing for England in 2017; however, he only became a regular pick in the white-ball teams after the 2019 ODI World Cup. He showed stellar form in T20s between 2019 and 2022 and was part of the World Cup-winning squad in 2022, apart from being the World No.1 batter in the format for quite some time. 

He scored six ODI centuries overall, most of them coming during the 2023 ODI World Cup build-up for England, where he outperformed Jason Roy to become England’s main opener in the format. However, a poor World Cup was followed by Malan being dropped from the side, and he hasn’t been selected for England ever since. 

However, he has been a regular in franchise cricket for almost a decade, playing everywhere from Bangladesh to the West Indies. He recently was a part of the Oval Invincibles squad that won the Hundred.

Apart from that, he’s a regular feature in the Pakistan Super League (PSL) and has also played the Indian Premier League (Punjab Kings) and the SA20 (Sunrisers Eastern Cape), where he won the title as well. He’ll be expected to be even more active in the franchise circuit after his retirement. 

However, Test cricket was his weakest format, and he averaged only 27.53 after 39 innings. However, speaking to the Times, he said that he was quite satisfied with his performance in the white-ball formats. 

"Test cricket was always the pinnacle for me growing up,” he told Mike Atherton of 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.

"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.”  

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