England batter Dawid Malan retires from international cricket

Former England batter Dawid Malan has announced his retirement from international cricket with immediate effect.

Malan, who was once the world’s top-ranked T20 batter, was a part of England’s World Cup winning squad in 2020. He also topped the T20 batting charts the same year.

The 37-year-old opined that although he had exceeded his expectations in white ball cricket, he admitted that he couldn’t handle the grind of Test cricket and according to his standards, he had a below-par Test cricket career.

Malan played 22 Test matches, 30 ODIs and 62 T20 internationals for England. He is only the second player, alongside Jos Buttler, to have scored centuries for England in all three international formats of the game (Test, ODI and T20).

Malan’s last appearance for England was in the 2023 ODI World Cup in India last year and after he was omitted for England’s white-ball series against Australia, he decided to hang his boots.

Speaking to English media, The Times, Malan said not having a great Test career is a biggest regret. “I took all three formats extremely seriously but the intensity of test cricket was something else – five days plus the days building up. I am 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,” he said about his performances in Test cricket.

Malan played 10 of his 22 Test matches in consecutive tours in Australia in 2017-18 and 2021-22, with a batting average of 33.00.

He is England’s fastest player to reach 1,000 runs in the T20 format, from just 24 innings.