Hyderabad: England batter Dawid Malan has announced his retirement from international cricket after representing the national side in 22 Tests, 30 ODIs and 62 T20Is. Malan is only one of the two English batters (along with Jos Buttler) to have scored hundreds in all three international formats. However, Malan had not featured in the England ODI squad since the World Cup played last year and confirmed his decision after the omission from the upcoming white-ball series against Australia.
Malan revealed his decision to retire while speaking to the Times.
"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 scored 1074 Test runs from 22 fixtures with an average of 27.53. The left-handed batter scored 1450 ODI runs with an average of 55.76. Also, he amassed 1892 T20I runs with a strike rate of 132.49.
