MALAN’S OFF HIS TROLLEY!
Bangladesh v England Third ODI, tomorrow, 6am Chittagong Series: Eng 2-0 EXCLUSIVE
DAWID MALAN has spent the majority of the past five years carrying the drinks for this England ODI side. Not any more.
But if he propels them to another World Cup triumph in India later this year, England should raise a glass to the fickle hand of fate that turned him from a gap-year student into a white-ball cricket master.
Malan’s match-winning hundred in the opening ODI of the series against Bangledesh was his second in two innings for skipper Jos Buttler (below) and his side.
That run faltered in the second ODI on Friday, with Malan falling for 11 as Jason Roy’s 132 set England up, exactly, for a 132-run victory that secured the threematch series.
But Malan, 35, still looks a shoo-in for a place in England’s top order in a World Cup year. A fairy-tale end to a story with an unlikely start.
Former England and Middlesex batsman Clive Radley, 78, recalled: “Dawid came over from South Africa when he was still a teenager.
“He was going to do a summer’s work at Oundle School. A bloke, who was chairman at Teddington at the time, phoned me up and said that his mate’s son was a good cricketer and was helping out at a school over the summer.
“I was head coach at the MCC at the time and he basically asked me if I would take a look at him.
“I told him we were full, because we had 18 or 20 apprentice pros already on the staff. But I asked him to give me the lad’s number and said if we could fit him in for a match, we’d go for it.
“Anyway, we had a Second XI game against Leicester at Hinkley and in the warm-up one of our youngsters got injured.
“I had Dawid’s number at the school, which was only just across the way.
“I called him, he came across and got there just after the game started.
“He got padded up just in time to go in at number three – and it went from there really.
“The first ball he faced, he clipped off his hip for four and he looked very, very decent.
“I got straight on the phone to Embers [John Emburey, the then Middlesex coach] and told him that they needed to sign Dawid up before somebody else did. I thought he would have been an overseas player, but when I spoke to him in the lunch break, it turned out he had a UK passport, so everything fell into place.
“Would he have made it without that injury in the warm-up opening the door? I’m not sure. What I do know is that he didn’t come to England that summer looking for a professional contract.”
Malan’s father was a dentist at a local hospital in south-west London, and the England star was born in Roehampton before the family moved back to South Africa.
Malan has made almost 100 England appearances across three formats.
His 114 in game one of this series will go down as one of the best innings by an England batsman on the sub-continent.
No longer carrying the drinks, now he is the toast of this side.