"I don't know what else I can do to break into the team for the T20 World Cup. I don't know how you can be under pressure with an average over 57 and a strike rate over 150"
Tuesday 4 February 2020 15:58, UK
Dawid Malan has been electric in T20 cricket for England and will now be looking to take that form into the 50-over format. In his first blog for Sky Sports, the batsman discusses his stop-start international career, Eoin Morgan's captaincy and playing in the social-media age…
These next few weeks give me another chance to stake a claim for a regular place in England's white-ball teams.
From a personal, selfish point of view you want to be playing all formats, so to have played only one ODI so far is frustrating but I understand the circumstances of why that is. England's batsmen have been excellent over the last four or five years.
They have been part of a World Cup win so it is a hard group to break into but it's up to me to try and do that having been given my chance with guys like Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes rested.
One or two games every now and again has been the story of my Twenty20 career with England - it's been very sporadic with the nature of T20s on the international stage usually being short series.
With that, I know I need to score runs - and with an average over 57 and a strike rate over 150 in my nine T20Is, I don't know what else I can do to break into the team for the T20 World Cup.
I don't know how you can be under pressure with numbers like that, even though I know the strength of the competition for places.
You want to know that scoring runs in international cricket can help you cement a spot or at least push those in possession and that if they get injured or lose form, it's you who takes their place.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
