“There aren’t many experienced batters with 10,000 first-class runs about. They don’t fall off trees,” said Yorkshire Andrew Gale only last month when talking about player availability ahead of the 2020 county season.
In Dawid Malan, however, the White Rose have found one. And you may well say that he’s fallen from the top branch.
Yorkshire have secured the services of the England fringe left-hander following his departure from Middlesex, where he has been captain in all forms for the past two seasons.
A player with 21 international caps across all formats, including 15 Test Match appearances in 2017 and 2018, Malan has posted 11,229 first-class runs from 188 matches to date since debuting in February 2006 back in South Africa.
Born in Roehampton, south West London, Malan grew up in South Africa, made his first-class debut for Boland and played second-team cricket for Middlesex and Worcestershire.
Now aged 32, he has scored 25 first-class centuries with a best of 199 against Derbyshire in late June of this year.
Malan has topped 1,000 first-class runs in an English summer on three occasions (2010, 2014 and 2019).
In the summer just gone, he was one of seven batsmen to reach 1,000 runs in both divisions of the Specsavers County Championship (1,005 runs at 47.85 with four centuries).
An easy on the eye watch against the red ball, Malan, whose nickname is AC (think Italian football!), bowls some useful leg-spin and has taken just over 120 career wickets across the various formats.
