Why Yorkshire CCC’s Dawid Malan backs The Hundred to silence critics and deliver top quality competition

The England international, who enjoyed an impressive, albeit truncated debut season last year at Headingley, was yesterday revealed to have remained with Trent Rockets for the controversial new format, which was cancelled last season because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Malan is currently one of the hottest properties in white-ball cricket, having soared to the top of the Twenty20 world rankings following scintillating form in England colours.

Tuesday also saw Malan’s Yorkshire team-mates Adam Lyth and Tom Kohler-Cadmore announced as being involved in this year’s inaugural tournament, having been retained by Headingley-based Northern Superchargers, who already have fellow White Rose representation in the shape of David Willey and Adil Rashid, with Ben Stokes also confirmed.

The Hundred has come in for scathing criticism in some quarters, labelled an unnecessary and unwelcome addition to an already-congested fixture calendar, given the various formats that already exist, including a Twenty20 competition which some critics feel a revamp of would have been a better option for cricket administrators.

But Malan is anticipating a high-quality product being put on this summer, partly due to less teams being involved than in other formats, but also because a number of high-profile overseas places still to be confirmed, including the likes of Australia’s Steve Smith, David Warner and Aaron Finch.

“I’ve read some negative stuff, but just because you’ve watched cricket for 20-odd years or even 50-odd years that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy The Hundred,” said Malan.

“It’s still a game of cricket with some of the best players in the world. This country has some unbelievably talented cricketers in and outside the England set-up. The thing that makes other tournaments strong is that they have all their good players condensed into a smaller number of teams, they’re not spread over 18, 16 or 14 teams.

“If you put all our best players into eight teams suddenly you’ve got a pool of international, overseas and local players at the top of their game going against each other. It should be an incredibly strong tournament.”

Malan’s confirmation as one of the star signings for the Nottingham-based Rockets franchise is a far cry from the first draft for the competition back in October 2019 when none of the eight teams fancied him for their line-ups.

But he was eventually picked up in the penultimate round of picks as the Rockets’ 11th-choice player, placing Malan in the £40,000 bracket, less than half of the maximum tier and below the six-figure contracts picked up by other leading domestic players such as Liam Livingstone, Liam Dawson and Sam Billings.

But the postponement of the first-ever season for The Hundred seems to have worked in Malan’s favour, with his current ranking as the world’s leading T20 batsman seeing his employers quick to offer him enhanced terms in case he was tempted away elsewhere.

And while dozens of players are set to collect a reduced pay cheque due to cost savings applied as a result of the pandemic, 33-year-old Malan has picked up a raise of around 50 per cent.

“I was pretty surprised at where I came in the last draft,” explained Malan. ”I thought my record and what I’d done with England and domestically would be enough.

“Maybe that was my own fault; before a lot of these tournaments people will speak with coaches and teams to understand what they’re looking for. That’s not something I did. I was the third highest run-scorer in the previous T20 Blast but maybe if I’d been in touch it might have been easier.

“This time around, when it came to retention, I picked up the phone to the head coach Stephen Fleming and Mick Newell and they came up with an offer straight away. It was something I was happy to accept straight away.

“If a team picks you up in the draft and makes that show of faith in you it’s always good to show faith back to them.”

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