Dawid Malan on Lord’s as a T20 venue, a nervy debut and The Hundred

HUW TURBERVILL: Spin doctors, look away now – Dawid Malan has a revelation about playing white-ball cricket at Lord’s...

Spin doctors, look away now – Dawid Malan has a revelation about playing white-ball cricket at HQ. "I’m a personal believer that Lord’s isn’t a good place for one-day cricket,” he says. "You don’t really get the flat wickets, the 350 pitches in 50-over and the 200 pitches in T20, not like you do at Trent Bridge, Taunton, Essex and Birmingham."

That is the thing about the England batsman. He is honest, and has interesting opinions – a journalist’s dream.

Malan is previewing this summer’s Vitality Blast, which begins on July 4. The following day, his Middlesex side host Surrey at Lord’s in what should be one of those amazing T20 sell-outs.

Asked to name a side who could win the competition if Middlesex do not, he says: “Notts are a really good team. I always think they play on the best wicket, which definitely helps. At Trent Bridge you have the batters being able to score runs and the bowlers to defend it. A team like that is extremely dangerous.” 

Malan has vivid memories of playing his first T20 aged 19 for Middlesex in 2006… and it did not go to plan.

"John Emburey said to me, ‘have you every played a T20?’ and I was like ‘nope’, and he said, ‘right you’re playing tonight at The Oval in front of 23,000 people”, and I heard Paul Weekes in the background saying ‘signed another young pup, have we? Here we go again.’ I got 11 off 22 balls and lost us the game.

"It was against Azhar Mahmood, Jade Dernbach, Tim Murtagh; Rikki Clarke bowled really quick, I kept ducking him and thinking, ‘Oh I played that one well.’ I didn’t play another for two years which was a bit disappointing but it was a good learning curve. My parents have got pictures of that day all over the fridge for some reason, and I think I’ve done a few things better than that in my career now.

"Middlesex didn’t take things that seriously back then in white-ball cricket, but they gave us the opportunities; Ed Smith was captain, and he approached the T20 really well. He did a lot of homework on it and knew what formulas worked at the time in T20 and back in those days, and we played to that sort of format and it paid off [Middlesex won in 2008].

"I was quite fortunate that I played when I was young, I think if I was 25 and just starting off it would have been a different story, because in T20 you might not get the same backing as a young player. I think one of the major things in international cricket is to learn how to handle pressure.

"You have to deal with the pressure and the scrutiny from the media, and the thing that T20 teaches you is that you have to be able to handle pressure.

"Obviously in Test cricket you need to have a basic technique and temperament, and a will to bat long as a batsman, and to score runs, but I think once you can deal with those pressures in T20 and the expectations and downs of probably losing more games than you will win, I think in certain situations it helps you move forward in the longer format.”

Malan believes it will be difficult for 100-ball cricket – if it happens – to oust T20 as the game’s globally preferred format.

“If the rest of the world keeps playing T20 and there’s a T20 World Cup, I can’t really see how 100-ball cricket is going to take over. It’s a good initiative from the ECB to bring a franchise system in, but T20 is your key. No one knows what’s happening with this 100-ball thing."

Malan is hoping Middlesex have a better T20 campaign than last time, the first under coach Dan Vettori.

“Last year was tough for Dan, he only arrived a week before the tournament started and we finished a four-day game a day or two days before which once again just shows where things are, I mean how can you start a tournament and finish a four-day game two days before?

"There’s just no time to prepare and if you want the guys to have the best cricket, and to play the best cricket, there has to be a time, whether it’s a 10-day period before where people can actually start training.

"At the end of the day, T20 is your money maker in England, they fill the crowds out, all the grounds out, so the last thing we want is players to come in tired from a four-day game, underprepared because they haven’t worked on their white-ball skills and people walk away disappointed. 

"A couple of people got picked for England, myself and Toby Roland-Jones, Eoin Morgan wasn’t around for a couple of games, Brendon McCullum, he’s a fantastic player but he started off really slow, Paul Stirling was away with Ireland for a bit so you’re looking at your five main players suddenly not being available. 

"Hopefully this year it’ll be a little bit different, and we know which way he wants to play now. It still might not click this year but hopefully by the middle of our T20 season we’ll start to work at how he wants us to play, at how we need to play and how we fit into his view of playing."

Dawid Malan was speaking at the launch of the Vitality IT20 – starting with England v Australia at Edgbaston on June 27. Vitality offers health insurance, life insurance & investments  www.vitality.co.uk