Dawid Malan

An early highlight came at the age of 20, when he struck 103 from 51 balls in a T20 match, an innings his Middlesex captain at the time, Ed Joyce, rated among the best ever produced by a player that young. The red-ball game proved harder to master. His first-class average hovered in the late 30s, which kept him well down the selectors' list, and only in 2014 did he complete a season averaging above 40. His breakthrough year was 2016, when he hit an unbeaten 185 off 126 balls for the England Lions against Sri Lanka A at Northampton, a record score for the Lions.

England handed him a T20 debut against South Africa in 2017, and he marked it with 78 from 44 balls to collect the Man of the Match award. A gap in a struggling Test middle order brought him into the longer format partway through the South Africa series that summer, though he managed only 35 runs across four innings against a strong attack. He fared better against West Indies, totalling 154 runs with two fifties.

Picked for the 2017-18 Ashes, Malan was one of the few positives for England as Australia won the series 4-0. He scored his first Test hundred at the WACA in Perth, passed fifty three more times and gathered 383 runs in nine innings at an average above 40, adapting sensibly to conditions. His Test career faded once the Bazball approach took hold, and he played no Test after January 2022.

In the shortest format he played in leagues around the world, experience that sharpened his international game; in 2020 he became the first player to exceed 900 points in the T20I rankings. Before the World Cup in India he scored five centuries in 15 innings, edging out Jason Roy for a place at the top of the order, where England expected him to deliver at the 2023 tournament. He names Graeme Smith, Jacques Kallis and Mark Boucher as his sporting heroes.