Malan Focus Is On Runs, Not Ashes

Chris Stocks talks to a man who found his scoring touch after he put dreams of a winter tour to the back of his mind

- Chris Stocks

The mental side of the game is often the hardest thing for an international cricketer to master and Dawid Malan admits thoughts of this winter’s Ashes left his mind scrambled when he began his Test career earlier this summer.

Malan, who celebrated his 30th birthday on Monday, put Australia to the back of his mind after he scored the grand total of 35 runs in his first four Test innings against South Africa.

Results since, with the Middlesex batsman scoring two half-centuries in the first two matches of this series against West Indies, have been encouraging, even if his second-innings 61 at Headingley, which spanned almost five hours, was hard to watch.

The Ashes are now a live possibility again for Malan, even if the man himself is still trying to avoid thinking about them.

“To be fair, I have been trying to get it out of mind especially after the first two games against South Africa,” he says.

“At the time, I was looking a bit far ahead and I’ve tried to bring it back to game by game, finding a way to score runs, be it sticking in – it’s about runs at the end of the day.”

Malan believed that his Test career would be short-lived because of the presence of Gary Ballance, who lost his place at No.3 thanks to the fractured finger he sustained in the second Investec Test against South Africa but was touted for a return at Malan’s current position of five.