Magnificent Yorkshire CCC star Dawid Malan will cherish T20 milestone

Matt Salisbury, the Leicestershire seam bowler, could only watch and admire – grudgingly, no doubt – as the ball sailed out towards the East Stand during Sunday’s T20 Blast match at Headingley.

It was the classiest of strokes by the classiest of batsmen, one that lifted Malan from 9,999 to 10,005 career runs in T20s, a format of the game from which he once looked down on the rest of the world from the summit of the International Cricket Council (ICC) rankings.

“It’s fantastic when you can bring up milestones like that,” said Malan, who top-scored with 88 out of 213-7 before his side closed out a tremendous win by 106 runs, their first in this season’s tournament, and Yorkshire’s second-biggest by a runs margin in 20-over cricket.

“Obviously, milestones are the things that you look back at in your career when you retire, and to be able to say that you've scored 10,000 runs is awesome.

“I don’t know how many English players have done it, but, yeah, it’s a great thing to do.

“It was good to get a win on the board and to be able to contribute to that is a great feeling.”

For the record, Malan is the fifth English player to achieve the feat (out of 18 players worldwide) alongside Alex Hales, Jos Buttler, James Vince and Jason Roy.

Another 91 runs – perhaps even against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge on Wednesday, given his talent and his form right now – would lift Malan above Roy, his former England colleague.

The 10,000 club is led – surprise, surprise – by the ‘Universe Boss’ himself, one Christopher Henry Gayle.

As with Malan, Gayle was adept across all formats, with Malan’s versatility shown by the fact that he recently went past 30,000 career runs too, having made 13,574 at first-class level to go with 6,561 in one-day cricket.

“If someone had said to me 15 years ago that I’d be in the same – well, I’m not in the same bracket as Chris Gayle as a player,” Malan modestly corrects himself, “but in the same bracket in terms of runs in T20s, I wouldn’t have believed it.

“Having said that, and I don’t know the exact figures, Chris Gayle is probably still 20,000-odd runs ahead of me because he was just that good.

“But, yeah, to be able to say that you’ve achieved something that those sorts of players have achieved is definitely special.

“It’s something I’ll look back on with very fond memories.”

Malan, 37, reflects humbly on his achievements in 20-over cricket, which have taken him around the world in franchise action.

According to ESPNCricinfo (other statistical resources are available), he has turned out for, in alphabetical order, the following entities in short-form competition: Barisal Bulls, Cape Town Blitz, Comilla Victorians, Cumilla Warriors, Fortune Barishal, Hobart Hurricanes, Islamabad United, Khulna Titans, Multan Sultans, Peshawar Zalmi, Punjab Kings and Sunrisers Eastern Cape), in addition to his commitments with England, Yorkshire and previously Middlesex, of course, along with his appearances for Trent Rockets in The Hundred.

Asked why he has been so successful in T20 cricket, given that he once rose to the top of those world rankings, he said: “I don't know. I think I'm a bit of a student of the game. I've never taken anything for granted in T20 cricket.

“I've always tried to find ways of getting better, whether that's studying opposition, whether that's having clear plans to people beforehand, practising those plans, and so on.

"I also hit a hell of a lot of balls.

“I'm not as talented as a Jos Buttler, say, and I find I have to work my absolute backside off to get every bit of talent that I've got out of myself.

“Thankfully, that's paid off, and hopefully I've got a few more years of squeezing that stone and getting more out of it.”

Sentiments, you can be sure, that every Yorkshire fan would echo.