Dawid Malan backs 'Strauss review' to improve English Domestic Cricket


image-l8ne2agoDawid Malan in action for Yorkshire (PC: Twitter)

Dawid Malan has supported Andrew Strauss' High-Performance Review, which has proposed a 15% reduction in the total number of matches being played in men's domestic cricket. 

The review suggests a trimming in the matches of the County Championship and the T20 Blast. Currently, each team in Division One and Division Two plays 14 matches in a single Championship season. 

The move will require consent from 12 out of 18 counties to be implemented from the 2024 season. 

Meanwhile, some Professional Cricketers' Association and County boards have already decided to vote them down, as they do not want the new rule to be adopted in the domestic circuit. 

The Lancashire Cricket Board have emerged to be leading from the front in reminding the ECB to think about the welfare of English Cricket and the importance of County Championship. 

With the rising number of franchise leagues and ECB's showpiece event, The Hundred being played in the Summer, Strauss wants less cricket, but with better intensity. 

It is evident that the 2022 season witnessed the players complaining of a lack of rest between the games. The tournaments like Royal London Cup, The Hundred and County Championship were scheduled simultaneously, which certainly affected the whole domestic structure. 

In this regard, Malan backed Strauss's move, and thinks the players need a proper rest between the subsequent games to prepare well and work on uplifting their skills. The 35-year-old added that bowlers will be able to bowl faster for longer durations, while batters will learn to negate different challenges. 


"It's about creating a schedule that keeps players wanting to play all formats," said Malan. 

"If you can create something that's going to encourage people to keep playing all formats of the game, that's going to be the winner for English cricket moving forward.

"It has to make it appealing for players, to still want to play four-day cricket, scheduling-wise, so there is a bit of time between games for them to rest, recover and work on their games."

The County Championship Division One 2022 saw Surrey being crowned as the champions, while Nottinghamshire took the honours of Division Two. 


Read more: Durham docked 10 County Championship points for Nic Maddinson’s over-sized bat