70 2GM Thursday December 3 2020 | the timesSportCricket
Shortly after completing his final
assignment in England colours for the
year, Ben Stokes fired a warning to
opponents in the next World T20,
describing the potential of England’s
T20 team as “scary”.
Stokes was one of five players from
the T20 squad to bid farewell to South
Africa as attentions turn to the 50-over
series and the selectors wrestle with
ways of managing player workloads
before a packed 2021 schedule.
Dawid Malan, Chris Jordan, Sam
Curran and Jofra Archer are the others,
with Malan and Jordan not selected,
while Curran, Archer and Stokes areAsked if victories in both World Cup
and Ashes were achievable, Stokes gave
a typically bullish reply. “If we don’t
think they are, it’s pretty pointless turn-
ing up, to be honest. Obviously we’rerest on his
laurels. His second
consecutive man-of-
the-match award at
Newlands came after
his tenth half-century
in 19 innings, a tally
achieved in a quicker time
than Chris Gayle (25
innings), Kohli (29) and
Babar (30), but he knows
that Joe Root and others are
gunning for a place in the
T20 team and that will
keep him on his toes.
Remarkably, he has
played only one one-day
international and as
England turn their
attentions to 50-over
cricket Malan now faces
a two-week quarantine
period before he starts his
next adventure in the Big
Bash in Australia.
“Have passport, will
travel” has been his route
to the top and, you
sense, he’s not about
to settle down yet.‘Bat for hire’ Malan’s rise to best ever
T20 the quickest
form? Not so fast
Mike Ather ton
Cricket Writer of the Year
C
ricket retains an infinite capacity to
surprise. The International Cricket
Council rankings can deceive but they
usually reflect with some accuracy on
the moment, and Dawid Malan’s
innings in the third T20 at Newlands was that of
a man at the top of his game, and the game. The
day after breaking the hearts of South Africa’s
bowlers, those very rankings confirmed that
Malan’s rating of 915 points is the highest ever
attained by any batsman in the format.
For now, he looks down on peers who would
generally be considered far superior players.
Babar Azam, the smooth-as-you-like Pakistan
batsman, is at No 2; Virat Kohli, India’s cross-
format superstar, is at No 9 and his compatriot,
Rohit Sharma, one place below that. Malan is in
very exalted company indeed and if he admitted
at the start of this series that his position had
surprised not only everyone else but himself,
too, then his innings at Newlands was that of a
man comfortable in his new clothes.It has been a remarkable rise for someone
ignored by England in one-day cricket for more
than a decade and who, until recently, has had
his doubters — not least, perhaps, Eoin Morgan,
who pointedly criticised Malan in Napier last
year for failing to run off the final ball of the
innings, implying a degree of selfishness that
did not sit well with England’s captain. When
Malan, 33, took a single to win the game on
Tuesday evening, stranding himself on 99, no
doubt that shot across the bows was on his
mind. Malan’s story is very different from some
of his colleagues in the England dressing room,
for whom success has come quickly: his is one of
perseverance and determination, a journey that
has taken in a lot of county cricket and some
less glamorous postings along the way.
The accepted storyline around England’s
dramatic improvement in short-form cricket is
the importance of the Indian Premier League tothat revival. When Kevin Pietersen memorably
likened chatting to Andrew Strauss about the
IPL as akin to “speaking to the vicar about
gangsta rap”, it was because Pietersen was an
outlier and England’s cricketers were generally
discouraged from going to the IPL at a time
when England’s one-day cricket lay in the
doldrums. All that has changed. England’s rise
to World Cup winners coincided with a policy
shift that ironically was instigated by Strauss
in his role at director of England cricket.
There has been a growing acceptance of
the value of shared best practice and, as
such, isolationism is no more. This year
numerous England cricketers profited
(financially and otherwise) to varying
degrees, with Jofra Archer the
stand-out performer, winning the
IPL’s most-valuable-player award.
Not for Malan, though, the
precociousness of someone like
Sam Curran, with a rapid
elevation to international
cricket and a fat, juicy IPL
contract while barely out of
his teens. Malan has never
played in the IPL and
has had to scratch around
the lesser franchised
competitions to get
recognition. His rewards
have been hard won.
The life of a travelling
franchise cricketer sounds
glamorous, but the reality can be
different. There are many examples
of contracts not honoured and of
players getting injured and missing
treatment, leaving them out of pocket
and out of action. However, on the
verge of desperation after being
overlooked by England in one-day cricket
for the best part of a decade, it was this route
upon which Malan embarked.
On the verge of turning 30, he was picked
up by Peshawar Zalmi in the Pakistan Super
League in early 2016, having experienced
list-A cricket in the Dhaka Premier Division
for Prime Doleshwar Sporting Club, for whom
he played 24 matches over two seasons.
Later in 2016 he took himself off to
Bangladesh to play for the Barisal Bulls.
By the time he was involved in the
North v South series in the UAE in early
2017 Malan told Andy Flower, the coach
of England Lions, that he was close to
throwing in the towel.
The routes to success are many and
varied and Malan has done it the hard way.
He is a latecomer who has had to prove himself
many times over and, as a result, is unlikely toI
n response to the tale of England’s analyst,
Nathan Leamon, sending real-time signals
to Eoin Morgan during the recently
concluded T20 series, one of our regular
readers David Harrington said he much
preferred that method to the strategic
time-out in the Indian Premier League,
the advertising-induced break in the game,
because it saves time.
“Get on with the game,” Mr Harrington said,
reflecting on what has been an unwelcome
trend in T20 cricket of the action slowing to a
frustrating crawl. With the addition of tactical
time-outs, the IPL is the worst offender, with
matches in the tournament I attended routinely
completing after midnight. In cricket when
India sneezes the world catches cold, and
everywhere else has slowed down too.
I asked Benedict Bermange, the Sky Sports
statistician, to run the numbers and, remarkably,
the supposedly fastest form of the game, T20,
is actually now the slowest by over rate.
Of course with sixes raining down there
are mitigating factors, but the game is a long
way from where it began in England in
2003, when players were on the clock
and the game fizzed along at an
attractive rate.
At the beginning of T20 in England
matches lasted, on average, two hours
and 17 minutes, with an over rate of
almost 19 overs per hour. Matches
have now plateaued at three hours,
with the Blast being the quickest
of all domestic T20 competitions,
the IPL the slowest. When
comparing international
cricket, 20 overs takes 96
minutes on average in T20,
88 minutes in 50-over
cricket and 87 minutes in
Tests. Perversely, over
rates in Tests, thought to
be the slowest form of
the game, are the
quickest of the lot.
Of course, next
year brings the
Hundred in domestic
cricket, which will, by design, reduce the length
of matches to 2½ hours. All it will do, of course,
is shorten games to the length they were when
T20 first started in England.
Mr Harrington is right: players need to be
given the hurry-up.Stokes: Our potential is scary – T20 build-up is just like World Cup
rested as the selectors look to prioritise
Test cricket and T20 cricket, with a
view to attempting to win the Ashes
and World T20 at the end of next year.
That is a potentially mouth-watering
double that will certainly require
Stokes and Archer, although the Ashes
may be a step too far for Curran. Find-
ing periods of rest is most challenging
for the multi-format players, with
Stokes of special interest because of his
punishing role as an all-rounder.
Reflecting on the T20 series, Stokes
said: “This has been a real boost in
confidence for us. We said after the first
game that even though we won it we
were nowhere near our best, but you
could see as the series went on we gotbetter and better. It’s a scary thing to
think about where this team could go
when we’ve played some more games
together. It feels very familiar [similar to
the build-up to the 50-over World Cup].”
“There is constant competition for
places now and in every team across
sport that’s what makes you successful.
Not only are you competing against the
opposition but you’ve got guys compet-
ing against you for your place which
just makes every team better. There’s
no selfishness in this group, everybody
wants everyone else to do well whether
they’re in the team or not. Guys want
others to be knocking down the door
and do well and it’s a great place to be at
the moment.”very confident in our ability as a side
and what we’ve always done is focus on
ourselves. We know if we play our best
game of cricket we can beat most teams
which isn’t an arrogant thing to say, it’s
where we’re at, at the moment.”
Stokes injured his hand in the final
T20 but was trusted with the ball briefly
by Eoin Morgan in the second and third
games and his fitness for all-rounder
duties will be watched carefully.
“I don’t have the mental capability to
look that far ahead [to the Ashes] or I’ll
give myself a headache. I just take
things as they come. There’s a massive
year of cricket coming up again and
hopefully I’ll be able to play a full part in
it,” he said.Mike Atherton Cape Town South Africa v England
First ODI
Tomorrow, 11am GMT (day-night),
Cape Town
Second ODI
Sunday, 8am, Paarl
Third ODI
Dec 9, 11am (day-night), Cape Town
All games live on Sky Sports Cricket.d t i p i E cf
amy
HuDawid Malan (Eng, now)
915
Aaron Finch (Aus, July 2018)
900
Virat Kohli (India, Sept 2014)
897
Babar Azam (Pak, May 2019)
896
Kevin Pietersen (Eng, May 2010)
882Malan scales new heights
Best-ever tallies of ICC T20 batting ranking pointsDawid Malan