Summary New Gloucestershire signing is weighing up his options as his playing career winds down.
LONDON (Web Desk) - Dawid Malan is a man approaching a career crossroads, but he's not in any mood to slow down for oncoming traffic. At the age of 38, he has just joined his third county, Gloucestershire, on a two-year deal for the Vitality Blast, and thereafter who knows what the future will hold? One thing's for sure: he's already looking left and right, as well as straight ahead, and will plough on with utter commitment to whichever route he so chooses.
Malan's ambition still burns with an intensity that some have found unsettling in the course of his hard-driven career. He says he would have happily seen out his playing days with Yorkshire - the team that he captained in last year's Blast, having been their leading run-scorer in each of the previous two seasons - but he craved both the security of a longer-team contract at Bristol, as well as the ambition of a team that defied the odds to claim the title in 2024.
And, though he speaks with the passion of a man still in his playing prime, Malan is already thinking significantly further down the line. Last summer, he cut his teeth in the media landscape, with his stints for the BBC during the 2025 home summer and more recently at the T20 World Cup. And, at the same time, he is actively seeking a route into the coaching world… even if it means adding his name to the list of aggrieved ex-England players awaiting a call back from the beleaguered managing director, Rob Key.
"Keysy keeps saying he's going to fast-track me into some things, not necessarily England stuff," Malan tells ESPNcricinfo. "I'm still waiting for him to reply… I don't know if I'm allowed to say that! I know he's got a hundred better things to do than reply to me. But it's something I'd like to do if the opportunity comes.
"I'm still unsure what I want to do after cricket," he adds. "This is a different stage of my career, different to anything I've been used to. I've always been very single-minded with my cricket and training, and doing what I want to do to get to where I want to in my career. I'm not used to having loads of things going on, but hopefully I can find a path that I enjoy and want to stay in."
"I am getting to the stage now where I don't particularly want to be facing Jofra Archer, let's be honest!" he adds. "I don't know if the eyes are there, or the motivation is fully there for that type of bowling all the time, and I don't want to be playing 12 months of the year either. So it's about picking and choosing a little bit more and being a bit smarter."
The notion of coaching is not entirely new to Malan. Two years ago, when it became clear that his England days were over, he pivoted to a voluntary role on the Yorkshire staff "just to throw some balls and speak to whoever wants to speak to me". More of the same is in the offing at his new county, although he stresses it's not simply for his own gratification.
"Obviously you still want to perform, but you get to the stage where you really want to leave things in a better place as well," Malan says. "There's a lot of talent that doesn't stay in the game. I've gained so much knowledge in my career - whether it be international, franchise or county cricket - and I have so much information that I can give over to players, and it feels like it'd be a waste if I went out of the game.
"That's obviously a decision I need to make, but I feel it would be good to fast-track players into coaching, so that they've had that experience before they are fully retired, and they are able to understand what it's going to take to be a full-time coach."
It's a route that other players of Malan's generation are already looking into. Earlier this year, Ben Stokes and Moeen Ali took up coaching roles with England Lions in the UAE, until that engagement was cut short due to the conflict in the region.
"From a financial point of view, guys like Mo and Stokes probably don't ever have to work again," Malan says. "But you've got other players that are desperate to stay in the game that have played for England, but might not have played for as long as them. You want to open it up, so it's not just the elite of the elite that get into opportunities like that.
"If you can just help one player with something that sticks with them, they become a better player, and maybe they end up playing for England."
Such are the discussions that Malan had with Mark Alleyne, Gloucestershire's head coach, and Jon Lewis, the director of cricket whom he got to know during his days as England's fast-bowling coach. Although, he admits, it's still early days for his relationship with his new club.
"It's been good chat so far on the phone," he says. Malan has had just one day on duty at the County Ground, for Gloucestershire's pre-season media day, but he did meet up with the squad in South Africa earlier in the year, when he was out in the country on a family holiday. Later this week, he plans to head down to Derby during their County Championship fixture and "just hang around, get to know people, throw balls… and add value where I can".
"Jon Lewis and Mark run a really relaxed camp, and they've been really good in just asking me what I need, what I want, and trusting me to do what I need to do to get ready for the season, which is a great position to be in," he says.
"Gloucestershire is a new challenge. I had an unbelievable time at Yorkshire. I'd still play there for ten years if I could. But this is a new club, new players, a new opportunity to prove myself, because I don't care what people have done in their career, when you walk into a new change-room, you still have to be the person you need to be.
"One of the things I've learnt with franchise cricket is that you very rarely play for the same team two or three years in a row. The freshness of playing is different places really excites me. And this excites me as well. You have to put the runs on the board. You still have to have the work ethic. You still have to show people why you were good or what they expect from you."
Malan was certainly good. He's one of a select band of players to have scored centuries in all three international formats, and at the peak of his England career, he topped the ICC's T20I rankings, while becoming the fastest to 1000 runs in the format.
Though his career fizzled out after England's grim showing at the 2023 ODI World Cup, his personal determination to make the grade culminated in four centuries and a 96 in the space of nine innings, a run of form that showed what might have been had he not found himself in the midst of a golden era for English white-ball cricket.
"Fifty overs was always my ideal format," he says. "I could bat at my tempo, and I could always find a release, and find ways of scoring. But the hardest thing was, you're competing with Joe Root at No. 3 and he's probably the best player that's ever batted for England. And at the time Jason [Roy] and Jonny [Bairstow] and [Alex] Hales were all fighting for the opening spot.
"There's absolutely no qualms from my side that they were better than me at the time, and they were scoring runs. But cricket's about opportunities. They got the opportunity, they took the opportunity, and they were so consistent for four or five or six years. They won a World Cup. They were phenomenal. So you have to be realistic. My 50-over career was just in the wrong era, where England just had so many players doing so well."
