England’s new-boy batsmen David Malan and Mark Stoneman have so far been unable to replicate the fluency of their county form in Test cricket. But their hard work is beginning to pay off, writes Will Macpherson from Day 1 at the WACA in Perth.
There’s a joy, albeit a rather perverse one, in seeing folks doing well in a fashion you did not predict. Watch Mark Stoneman and Dawid Malan play county cricket and you see free-flowing left-handers who, when in the groove, dominate attacks with power and elegance.
There is much similar about the pair. They are 30 years old, and have a decade of first-class experience, with a little over 150 games each, and went into today with 40 centuries between them (Stoneman boasted 21 to Malan’s 19) but modest career averages in the thirties that hardly scream ‘Pick me’. They were the two outstanding batsmen in the warm-up matches, and the tour’s only century-makers to date. Both are tough and uncompromising; there’s a scarcity of shrinking violets at Sunniside Working Men’s Club, where Stoneman’s father is treasurer and junior himself heads on Sundays at home in the north-east. Malan’s certainly no softie.
Hopefully Stoneman smashes that ceiling soon enough too. The effort he’s putting in is worthy of it. The pair have more runs than any other Englishmen, and have faced more balls, too.
Malan had worked beautifully with Jonny Bairstow, another whose instincts are swift-scoring but has had to graft hard to work out life at this level. The extent of his accomplishment was hammered home when he reached 68, and brought up 3,000 Test runs. At that stage, his average sat perfectly at 40. The pair, with their unbroken stand of 174, have pushed England into the ascendancy, and will return on the second day with the chance to hammer home the advantage.
