‘Hopefully white-ball cricket can be as recognised as Tests’- Dawid Malan opens up on ECB's 'strange' contracts system

England batter Dawid Malan believes that there is more emphasis on Test cricket as compared with white-ball cricket with regards to England Cricket Board’s (ECB) procedure for granting central contracts.

The experienced Englishman was awarded with a full-fledged contract with the national side from October 2021 to September 2022. However, Malan lost his spot in the Test side after the 4-0 loss in the Ashes to Australia.

Despite having a central contract with the side, Malan lost out on his spot as a regular. Moreover, he has not been picked up in the 15-member squad traveling to Pakistan for the forthcoming three-match Test series after the ICC T20 World Cup 2022.

Dawid Malan on ECB’s contract system

After the downgrade to an incremental deal, Malan expressed that the contract system provided by the English board as ‘slightly strange’.

"There's obviously a slightly strange system with the contracting system, It seems heavily led towards red-ball cricket when you have players that play one or two formats of the white-ball game. They are decisions that I don't make but ultimately, it puts you in tough situations if you're not contracted and you're losing finances playing in tournaments in the winter," ESPNcricinfo quoted Malan as saying.

Moreover, the batter also expressed that the current contract system could put him in ‘difficult spot’ later in winter. "Hopefully, white-ball cricket can get recognised as Test cricket does. You have players here who have been leading wicket-takers for England that don't have a contract, but those are decisions that I don't make. Keysy and I have had that chat already.

"As players, we'd like to be rewarded for our performances for England. You'd guess that's what contracts are for; and if you're ranked top five in the world for three years, you'd hope you'd get recognised with a white-ball contract, but that's just how it works. It's still an honour to play for England, and you want to play and win as many games as you can for England,” Malan added.