England cricket talking points including Jason Roy, Dawid Malan and Jofra Archer

Malan on top of the world but big guns circle

According to the rankings at least, Dawid Malan is a better T20 bastman than Virat Kohli and Babar Azam. Aaron Finch and Rohit Sharma, too. The current rankings that have the England man top of the tree.

It has been a remarkable ascent for the former Middlesex captain who now plays his cricket at Yorkshire. At the end of 2018, Malan's international career looked all but over after he was axed during the home Test series against India despite making a brilliant hundred at Perth in the previous winter's Ashes in Australia.

His failure to pass three figures subsequently and a Test average below 30 was enough for England's selectors to look elsewhere after 15 matches, and at that point Malan's career seemed likely to peter out with a mixture of county cricket and some lucrative stints playing on the T20 circuit around the world.

It was those spells in franchise cricket that honed Malan's game into that of an ultra-dependable, top-order batsman, but many observers might still have assumed England would move away from a player well into his thirties and facing a seemingly impossible task to break into a white-ball batting line-up laced with power and talent.

Still, Malan continued to grasp any opportunities to come his way with both hands and a brilliant hundred in Napier last winter has been the highlight of a remarkably consistent 16-match T20I career that has seen him add seven fifties to that century and amass a staggering average of close to 50.

He was again outstanding at number three against Pakistan and Australia this summer but despite that, it appears inevitable that he will find himself out of the side when Jason Roy, Jos Buttler and Jonny Bairstow are reunited to form a muscular top three.

Buttler's preference to now bat at the top of the order in T20 cricket has done Malan no favours - nor Tom Banton or Alex Hales either - but it's understandable given his form in that position for the Rajasthan Royals in the IPL, and his peerless white-ball credentials probably mean he can bat where he pleases.

Bairstow is the one seemingly under most pressure from Malan's outstanding numbers - particularly as he appears likely to move down to three with Roy back to full fitness - but he was magnificent in last year's IPL in India and given the 2021 T20 World Cup will be played in the same country, I'd want Wednesday's Old Trafford centurion in any white-ball England team.

So with four not fitting into three, and Eoin Morgan and Ben Stokes locked in in England's middle order, Malan looks like being the odd one out. Indeed, Morgan has suggested as much already.

Or perhaps not. With a T20 average of 48.71, and a wealth of experience playing T20 franchise cricket in places such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, Malan's ability to provide that anchor role for England while his more dynamic colleagues play around him could prove the perfect fit in India, particularly at the end of the year when some of the surfaces could well be worn and tired and provide some real challenges for batsmen.

As Morgan has been at pains to stress in recent weeks, England will need to bat smart in India when assessing, and adapting to conditions will be key, so having a player like Malan may prove invaluable. It's the same reason Joe Root shouldn't be too far away from World Cup selection discussions, either, and an England top three containing three gung-ho operators like Buttler, Bairstow and Roy could prove to be suicide.

Were that competition to be played in England or Australia, it would be unthinkable to leave Roy out of England's starting XI but he hasn't set the IPL alight yet and his decision to skip this year's event, while understandable, will deny him a crucial opportunity to gain more experience of batting against spin in the subcontinent.

We can all hope there is still plenty of cricket to be played before next year's T20 World Cup, but any assumption that Malan will have to warm the bench when England's big guns return would be a mistake, and even a player of Roy's pedigree might find himself under pressure if England opt for a horses-for-courses approach in India.

Go hard or go home

We all know by now that the white Kookaburra ball doesn't tend to swing for more than a few overs and that its seam offers nothing like the same assistance to fast bowlers as the Dukes.

It's one of the fundamental reasons why seamers have found the going so tough in limited-overs cricket over the last few years and why having a world-class wrist spinner like Adil Rashid, who can consistently pick up wickets in the middle overs, is such an valuable weapon for any side.

England have been lucky to have kept Rashid fit and largely firing for an extended period of time, but while Chris Woakes has generally provided Morgan with early wickets in 50-over cricket, his absence from the team in the shortest form of the game has left England searching for wickets up front.

In fact, it had become such a problem for England that having entrusted Moeen Ali to open the bowling with his off spin against Pakistan, Morgan went with his two fastest and most dangerous bowlers in the subsequent T20 series against Australia.

And it worked. After enjoying no luck early on in the series opener, Jofra Archer and Mark Wood combined to pick up three wickets in Australia's powerplay in the second match before causing plenty of problems in another pulsating Australian powerplay in the third.

It wasn't always economical but England had that wicket-taking threat again and with the T20 World Cup in mind, against the best top order batsmen in the world, it makes most sense for England to give their two trump cards the best chance of success with a hard, new ball that might offer them something, if only for a short period.

It has always felt like a waste when bowling teams try to 'slip an over in' at the start of an innings, hoping for their defensive finger spinner to get them off to a tidy start. But even if that part works, it rarely does anything more than allow the batsmen a comfortable, early sighter which the modern day player knows he can make up for when getting himself set and then upping the ante.

As we've seen time and time again in T20 cricket all around the world, the best way to keep the run rate in check is to take wickets and England must continue to search for those early breakthroughs. Hitting the opposition hard, with pace and aggression, is surely the best way to go.

Sloppy, slow England have work to do in the field

The two aforementioned points are largely positives. The fact England even have the option of leaving players of the class of Malan, Roy, or even Hales, on the sidelines just indicates the strength in depth the batting department houses.

It's the same with the bowling: Archer and Wood might be the fastest pair of bowlers in world cricket at present while Chris Jordan and Tom Curran are two wonderful death-bowling operators. With Woakes leading the line expertly in the 50-over game and Rashid continuing to spin his web in the middle overs, England's white bowling stocks - just as is the case in Test cricket - look pretty good, too.

One area of concern, though, has to be the fielding, which barring the odd exception, has been shown up in all three forms of the game this summer.

While the focus of this piece is white-ball cricket, it is worth noting that England began the summer with a ragged display in the field when allowing the West Indies to pull off a successful second innings run chase in the first Test at the Ageas Bowl, and things haven't improved much since.

James Anderson's charge to 600 Test wickets was held up by four dropped catches off his bowling in the space of 37 deliveries back in Southampton later in the summer against Pakistan, and England have been comprehensively put in the shade by Australia's terrific fielding over the last few weeks.

It is true that England are carrying a few older bones in Test cricket, but I'm more concerned about some of the younger players who have come into the set-up and don't yet field to the standard required for an international side apparently striving to reach the number one ranking in all three forms of the game.

England's fielding - or more specifically, their catching - was a constant headache for former coach Trevor Bayliss and the more cricket Stokes misses as he approaches his thirties and England are forced to manage his workload, the more the fielding promises to be shown up.

Malan doesn't look the answer at first slip should he hold onto his place in the T20 team while the ground fielding must return to the standards of last summer and before that if England are to harbour realistic hopes of dominating the white-ball, and red-ball, arenas in the next few years.

When Chris Silverwood took over from Bayliss as head coach, he made batting in Test cricket and the pursuit of big first innings runs his number one goal, but with tours of India and Australia just around the corner, England's fielding in all forms of the game will soon be back in the spotlight without some major repair work.