Sports Desk:

English batsman David Malan said goodbye to international cricket. The 37-year-old cricketer once topped the list of batsmen in the ICC T20 rankings.

Malan played 22 Tests, 30 ODIs and 62 T20Is for England. He is one of only two England men’s batters (alongside Jos Buttler) to have made centuries in all three international formats. He has not been in the national team since the ODI World Cup in India last year. His decision to retire came after he was dropped for the upcoming white-ball series against Australia.

Malan said that he had “exceeded all expectations of myself in white-ball formats”, but admitted that his inability to forge a more consistent Test career would be a regret. Ten of his 22 appearances came on consecutive tours of Australia in 2017-18 and 2021-22, where his average of 33.00 is bettered only by Alastair Cook, Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow among regular England performers of the past decade. However, he never played the format again after England’s 146-run defeat at Hobart in January 2022.

“Test cricket was always the pinnacle for me growing up,” he said. “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.

“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 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.”

“But, you know, on the field I always did what I felt was right to win a game for the team. I never walked off the field if I got runs not caring about whether we had won or lost. It was always about winning and I’d always question myself as to whether I’d made the right decisions on the field to do that.”

Malan is likely to be in high demand on the T20 franchise circuit with his England career behind him. He was most recently in action for Oval Invincibles, helping the team to victory in the Men’s Hundred, two years after he was part of the Trent Rockets squad that claimed the 2022 title. Last winter, he helped Sunrisers Eastern Cape win the second season of the SA20, and was also in action for Multan Sultans in the PSL.