Malan: Players burned out by county treadmill
England batsman backs Strauss blueprint to slash games and work on skills
DAWID MALAN has endorsed proposals to reduce the number of matches played by first-class counties from 2024.
At the heart of Sir Andrew Strauss’s high performance review is a recommended cut from 14 County Championship fixtures a season to ten, and a similar reduction in the Vitality Blast group stages — proposed changes that have led to a fierce backlash around the shires.
However, Malan — a player who has represented England in Test, one-day and Twenty20 cricket this year — advocates greater emphasis being placed on preparation.
‘It is a bit like this tour, where it feels like all you are doing is playing game after game but you’re not given the chance to improve and to work on your game,’ said Malan, ahead of this evening’s penultimate match of seven T20s against Pakistan.
‘County cricket becomes like that, where you just go from one game to the next and it is like you are going through the motions. You’re burning yourself out, so I do think less cricket at a higher intensity, and the ability to train and prepare for those games, will mean your bowlers will be fitter, able to bowl quicker for longer periods, and it will be more challenging for the batters.
‘If I’m playing for England and I go back to Yorkshire after a summer, I want to improve but if there’s no days of training and then you’re experimenting in games, you get judged on that.’
One major focus for Strauss was the fact that only once — for a fleeting period in 2011 — have England topped the world Test rankings.
‘We can’t argue that the county system is working if we’ve only been No1 for X amount of time,’ Malan added. ‘We’ve produced some world-class cricketers but the question is how the English system can produce cricketers who are going to be playing cricket similar to Tests.’
England trail 3-2 to Pakistan after twice flunking chases they should have completed in recent days.
However, Malan says the fact that they were ‘one ball away’ on Wednesday should be a lesson despite the fact they made a Horlicks of a 146-run target against opponents bowling with a dew-soaked ball.
Chris Woakes, who made his comeback from a six-month injury lay-off in that match, is set to return to the sidelines among various rest and rotation changes by the tourists.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s teenage pace bowler Naseem Shah has been ruled out of the rest of the series as he recovers from pneumonia. Hospitalised for two days, Shah returned to the team hotel yesterday.