0:43 Malan powered England to victory in the fourth T20 against New Zealand in November with a national-record 48-ball hundred.
I feel I have to score every chance I get as I don’t have the leeway that the established members of the side do. I need to churn out runs every time in order to get that leeway.
Removing the rustiness
My form over this winter has pleased me.
It is easy to have three or four good games, then disappear for seven, eight, nine before having three or four good games again but I have been consistent, firstly with England in the T20s in New Zealand and then going on to the Bangladesh Premier League.
- Watch South Africa vs England on Sky Sports
A duck wasn’t ideal in our second one-day warm-up on Saturday but it was my first knock in a couple of weeks and I felt a little bit rusty. Unfortunately, I didn’t bat long enough to get out of that rustiness! I am ready to go if selected for Tuesday, though.
We have had a little bit of illness around, with a couple of players going down with the bug that was hanging around during the Test matches, but the boys have got everything they needed out of the training days and warm-ups.
In the first practice match, which I didn’t play in, I think we were a little bit rusty. Looking from the outside the wicket didn’t look that easy but the guys then did well to defend 240.
Things then clicked with the bat in the second warm-up. Yes, we lost the game after the South African team chased an arranged total but we were able to put our bowlers under pressure, which is what Chris Silverwood and Eoin Morgan wanted.
Even though we didn’t get over the line, we got a hell of a lot out of it, with Eoin learning how guys go in difficult situations under pressure.
Taking the pressure off players, though, is one of the best things about Eoin and his captaincy. You never feel like the team or backroom staff are panicking or that there are any real dramas.
Players are encouraged to be themselves and as long as you buy into the team direction, everything is pretty relaxed. That is a tough thing to foster in international sport.
Morgs is great off the field, not the sort of guy to sit in his hotel room. He is always getting out with the boys and loves a bit of golf – if his back holds up!
ODIs will be real challenge
We know that as world champions and the best team in the world that there is extra motivation for the opposition, in this case South Africa, to beat us.
We don’t have Jos and Stokesy in this series, or Mark Wood and Jofra Archer among the bowlers, which is a massive miss for us, but that’s where guys like myself have to step up and keep pushing the boundaries that this team has been renowned for.
I can’t speak of the depth in South African four-day cricket but having played in the Mzansi Super League I can say that there are players coming through in the white-ball stuff – the standard is good.
So even though they have rested Kagiso Rabada and Anrich Nortje for the ODIs, they still have David Miller and some other fantastic cricketers and it is going to be one hell of a challenge for us.
Lungi Ngidi is back after injury and he is a very good bowler, having faced him a couple of times and seen how he has stood up in international cricket and in the IPL.
He is a massive find and from South Africa’s point of view to have him, Rabada and Nortje going forward is exciting. He has had to pass a fitness test, though, so hopefully we can get on top of him!
Then, of course, there is Quinton de Kock at the top of the order. He has probably been their most destructive player since AB de Villiers left – De Kock and Miller are the two guys you probably fear most from their team, with Quinton consistently scoring runs.
He showed in the Test series with the amount of runs he scored that the has a free-flowing way of playing so we’ll be hoping the captaincy affects that! Seriously, though, he is a fantastic player who has done it all over the world for a number of years.
Ups and downs of social media
We are obviously welcoming back Moeen Ali for these games after his break from international cricket, which I know he spoke to Sky Sports about.
1:46 Moeen Ali tells Sky Sports that he was hoping he would be dropped in the Ashes after feeling ‘burnt out’ by Test cricket.
He mentioned how tough it can be for modern players with social media and he’s right. It is tough and one of the biggest challenges in your international career.
People are always very positive early on whether you start well or not but after you play a few games and you are expected to perform, which you should do, everyone with a Twitter or Instagram account has an opinion on the way you are playing and whether you are good enough to be there.
You score a hundred and every single person thinks you are the best player ever and then a couple of ducks later the same people will be telling you that you are the worst player ever. It’s how you deal with the ups and downs and it’s not easy.
You want to read the positives and not see the negatives and it’s the guys who stay consistent and, for the ones who do read it, use the criticism to get the best out of themselves that cope best.
5:10 Malan explains how seeing analysis of his technique from Nasser Hussain helped him improve his batting technique
Sometimes you go under the radar a bit. There is the obvious fanfare and press when you make your debut but then it can go quiet until three or four games in. Then the only way to silence the doubters, in my case, is to score runs.
Look at someone like Joe Root. He had a quiet six months by his standards in Test cricket and everyone was questioning him, yet he’s one of the best players England have ever had.
No one really escapes the scrutiny from the public and sometimes it’s not the nicest to read – even though it always hard to resist having a look!
Watch the first ODI between South Africa and England, in Cape Town, live from 10.30am on Tuesday on Sky Sports Cricket.
Sourse: skysports.com
