14 April 24, 2022The Sunday Times 2GS K1Cricket
“If there was any form of bubble in
county cricket [now] I don’t think I’d
have made myself available. I just
can’t sit in hotels for extended periods
at the moment. It’s been a tough cou-
ple of years, staring at the walls. When
Covid crept into the camp in Melb-
ourne that made things a lot worse. I
was surprised we carried on, we lost
half our coaching staff. Players and
families were worried about being
stuck in hotel rooms again. But tough
as all that was, we didn’t perform as
well as we should have.”Broad and Anderson suggested
that whatever bowling attack England
deployed would have made little dif-
ference without more runs from the
batsmen, but Malan dismissed the
idea that the team were at logger-
heads. “There was no batters-versus-
bowlers thing. We were realistic that
we weren’t good enough with the bat.
We didn’t need Broady, Jimmy or any-
one else to tell us. But we hardly
bowled Australia out either. We
weren’t good enough to even look like
winning a game.”S
tuart Broad and James
Anderson made plain how
little contact they had from
the England management
after the Ashes defeat, and
how little explanation they
received regarding their
subsequent de-selection,
but they were not alone. Dawid
Malan, who is on a central contract
and finished second behind Joe Root
in Australia in terms of runs scored
and balls faced, suffered a similar
experience when he was also
dropped for the West Indies tour.
Malan, who has started the season
by passing 60 in three of his four
County Championship innings, faced
the added complication of his county
Yorkshire also being without a full
coaching team after the mass sackings
as a result of the Azeem Rafiq affair.
Looking for one-on-one batting ses-
sions in preparation for what the
34-year-old hoped would be a trip to
the Caribbean, he contacted Andrew
Strauss, the interim managing
director following the removal of Ash-
ley Giles; there was no head coach or
batting coach to turn to as Chris Silver-
wood and Graham Thorpe had also
been sacked. Eventually, a net was
arranged with Marcus Trescothick,
but before that took place Malan was
told in a phone call that he was not
needed as England wanted to go “in a
younger direction”.
“I thought I had a chance of going,
considering I’d only played seven
Tests since I’d been recalled,” he said.
“I started well in the Ashes and then
fell away in the last two Tests. There
had been a few things going on off the
field and a bit of bubble fatigue, so I
thought West Indies would be my
make or break.
“If I’d gone there and performed I’d
have had half a foot in the door for the
summer. If I hadn’t, that would proba-
bly have been the end of my Test
career. It was a surprise, but I proba-
bly didn’t expect the coach and every-
one at the top to lose their jobs. Cir-
cumstances obviously changed. I
understand that.
“I’ve seen a few things with Jimmy
and Broady saying they haven’t really
heard anything, and I think we’re all
in the same boat. It has been a
strange time where there has
been no one really in power
on a full-time basis.”
Malan has not given up
on adding to his 22 Tests, in
which he averages 27.53, but is
aware that coaches, captains and
selectors — all yet to be appointed —
may have different ideas. He still
expects, entirely reasonably, to
remain involved in the T20 side,
with a World Cup this year in a for-
mat in which he was recently
ranked No 1 batsman in the world,
and now stands No 4.
“I’m probably more realistic
than I was after the Ashes
[about a Test future]. I’m keen
to speak to managing director]
Rob Key and see what his
direction is. It would be nice to
chat to someone at the ECB, con-
sidering the people who made
decisions on my career were on an
interim basis. I’m pretty sure that
will happen over the next couple ofweeks. That’s all you want, to under-
stand what’s going on.
“My [T20] record over the last
three years for England has been
pretty good and I’ve contributed to
quite a few wins so hopefully that’s
good enough to keep me in and
around the squad.”
Malan’s personal situation was
complicated by the birth of his daugh-
ter, six weeks prematurely, during the
final Ashes Test in Hobart. He flew
home immediately to be with wife
Claire and baby. “We were fortunate
to have little Summer but she had a bit
of a tough time breathing. That’s
pretty normal with premature babies
but she was kept in the special baby
unit for 19-20 days. My wife was in hos-
pital full time and I was juggling being
there for them and being at home for
the dog. You had to do a lateral flow
test each day, we were sharing the
unit with four other families. We got
looked after extremely well but it
wasn’t fun staying in all those days. It’s
all worked out in the end and she’s
healthy and we’re able to live some
sort of normal life but it felt like it
wasn’t going to happen for a while.”
For Malan himself, this came after
four months in bubbles at the World
T20 in the UAE and on the Australia
tour. “The last two Tests were one of
the toughest things I’ve had to do.
You’d give an arm and leg to represent
your country, but we were 3-0 downDawid Malan reveals why he can’t
face the prospect of bubble life and
how he’s in limbo after crass axing
SIMON
WILDECricket Correspondentstaring at
the walls’
‘It’s been a tough
couple of years -
and there was Covid in the camp.
We’d been away a long time.
“Colly [assistant coach Paul Col-
lingwood, who left the Ashes mid-se-
ries to prepare for the white-ball tour
to the Caribbean] messaged me the
day before that last innings at Sydney,
when we were trying to save the
game, and said, ‘C’mon pal, give it
everything’, and I messaged back say-
ing, ‘I’m trying, but the tank is pretty
empty.’ Towards the end of tours it is
so hard to not think about getting
home, you count the days to freedom.