Heinrich Malan, why now?

A deep-dive into the events that saw Ireland change head coach after beating India

Heinrich Malan has left his role as Ireland head coach. Photo: Cricket Ireland

Friday afternoon, a senior Cricket Ireland official walks past the press tent at Stormont. Friendly words are exchanged. A few remarks on the state of Ireland’s chances against India (at that point they were nowhere close to pulling off a famous victory).

Then a more curious line as the official started to move on to shake more hands. “Keep an eye out for media announcements next week.”

“Who’s been sacked?” came the jovial response.

The official had already wandered off out of earshot by that point. Or they didn’t want to answer.

Either way, a shock announcement landed on Monday. Heinrich Malan will depart his role as Ireland head coach, just hours after overseeing the greatest home series win in Irish cricket’s history. Current assistant Gary Wilson will take his place.

To be clear, Malan has not been sacked. But it was not the original plan for him to walk away before the end of his current contract.

Malan’s ongoing deal expires in 2027 after the ODI World Cup qualifiers. With the ICC being slow in confirming when those qualifiers would take place (they are now believed to be in the first three months of 2027), there was no certainty on how long Malan’s contract ran. In recent months, conversations started on where he stood. Would a new deal be on the table post qualifiers?

After the recent Test defeat to New Zealand, Cricket Ireland and Malan met. Based on the information available at that time, it was agreed that the India series would be his last weekend in charge. The information was that Cricket Ireland would not extend his contract post 2027.

CI have said the move was a “mutually agreed outcome.” The timing of it was mutual, Malan perhaps happy to move his family out of the country during the school holidays. But the ultimate decision for him to move on was not, CI opting for a change at the top heading into the years to come.

Which leaves one question - why?

It’s proving rather difficult to answer. When announcing the move, reasons focused on timing and Gary Wilson being a home-grown coach. It makes sense for CI to bring Wilson in now ahead of a crucial few months of ODI fixtures that will ultimately decide if Ireland reach a first 50-over World Cup since 2015. Plus he’s the first Irish head coach in over 30 years.

But that does not explain the reasons for declining to extend Malan. Positive features about the alternative are all well and good, but there have to be discouraging ones about the incumbent to make a change.

CI subsequently held a media briefing on Tuesday. There, head of high performance Graeme West and CEO Sarah Keane were asked a the question on a handful of occasions. Why did Malan have to go?

“Over Heinrich’s tenure, you would certainly say that he has met a lot of the expectations,” said West. “If you look at the Test match wins, [T20] World Cup qualifications, we would certainly say that a lot of what he did was in line with expectation.

“If we look at the last World Cup, the washout of the Zimbabwe game was actually quite significant. A win against Zimbabwe, we come away with the wins we would have expected to. A win against Sri Lanka and Australia exceeds expectation. But you want to come away from those events having met expectation. Not having played Zimbabwe in the washout game was very frustrating.

“Where Gary’s career has got to, four years of exposure to international cricket, he’s a student of the game. He’s observed the teams we played against, the coaches we played against and what Heinrich brought. It’s no secret that Heinrich is exceptional when it comes to preparation and planning. That really started to come through with Gary when he took the A team to Abu Dhabi last year, it was seamless in terms of the approach.”

Keane, perhaps sensing growing frustration at the lack of a clear answer, then took her turn to contribute. “I’m enjoying learning about cricket but also asking the questions about high performance,” she said. “I do think that as we go forward we need to look at what we want to keep and what we’re doing really well, what is Ireland known for, what particular skills are we going to develop, what are we doing around our formats.

“One of the things I’m really keen on is that we go after this ODI World Cup qualifier, really give it a good attempt to get over the line. It’s been some time since we qualified for an ODI World Cup and we want to give ourselves some decent preparation going into that.

“We are seriously looking at how we invest in 19+ and blood the pathway and give that emerging talent an opportunity to show what they have to offer. We’ve got to build from here [beating India], this can’t be a once off. We’ve got to make some changes to do that, I’m not necessarily saying that the coaching one was part of that, but I’m certainly asking challenging questions as we go along and I’m expecting there will be some changes in both men and women’s international programmes as we go forward.”

“Giving emerging talent an opportunity” suggests a lack of turnover of the playing squad played into the decision regarding Malan. Speaking on background earlier in the week, one CI figure suggested the same, while disappointing results at World Cups were also mentioned as a factor (Ireland have won just once in their last 8 T20 World Cup matches, beating Oman but losing to Canada in that span). The official felt that the events of the weekend, Ireland winning largely on the back of debut performances by debutants Matthew Hollard and Jai Moondra, vindicated the selection criticisms.

However, after West and Keane were asked about these concerns on Tuesday, a CI spokesman clarified that selection concerns did not play a role in their decision-making process.

Back to where we started. Clear as mud.

Which leaves us to tease it out ourselves.

During Malans’s four-and-a-bit year tenure, Ireland handed out 12 new T20I caps and 13 new ODI ones. There were a host of Test debutants, albeit that was largely due to Ireland’s four-year hiatus away from the format.

Away from the pure numbers, players on the outside of the squad have reported feeling unsure of what to do in order to be selected. One player who has yet to feature in this year’s interpros due to the demise of Munster said he has never had a phone call with the senior Ireland staff. Multiple players have said they feel their interpro performances don’t put them in the shop window. Instead it’s about individual players coaches like for specific reasons, not just domestic results.

Which is, to be fair, largely true. Ireland have acknowledged that they have to select based on attributes, rather than averages as there aren’t enough interpros to build knowledge of players. Sometimes a punt needs to be taken. Ben Calitz was fast-tracked into the Ireland XI last year despite not having the same weight of domestic runs as someone like Tim Tector. Ireland felt they needed a left-handed power hitter in the middle order, instead of another opener. After a lean World Cup for most of Ireland’s batters, Calitz started to show promise with his knock of 37 off 23 balls (161 strike rate) against India.

Selection is not an exact science. Different rationale has to be applied at times, but that did not stop some players from feeling that their face didn’t fit and that no amount of success would see them selected. Some went as far as to say they felt senior coaches were disinterested in domestic matches.

What is a bit more black and white is Ireland’s records at T20 World Cups. CI have made clear their desire to not just qualify, but be more competitive at these events.

Players and staff would say they are not sufficiently prepared to do so. Prior to both the 2024 T20 World Cup in the USA and the 2026 edition in Sri Lanka, Ireland had busy fixture lists in the weeks leading into the tournament. Not, though, in the months prior. Their pre-tournament schedules were crash courses, rather than consistent preparation.

In New York, Ireland had the misfortune of batting first on a historically poor pitch against India. In Sri Lanka, dropped catches and issues with death batting cost them a deserved victory over the hosts. Across those two campaigns, there was one genuine poor performance against a team Ireland should have beaten - Canada in New York. Yet that shouldn’t excuse the fielding lapses that cost them historic upsets. Players and coaches were not set up for success by their preparation.

There are explanatory factors - there always are - but Ireland have underperformed in back-to-back World Cups.

Away from those campaigns, it’s worth looking at Ireland’s results more generally. Things actually started of quite well for Malan in T20 cricket. At the 2022 World Cup, his first in charge, Ireland beat Scotland and the West Indies to reach the main phase of the tournament. There, they famously beat England in a rain-affected game at the MCG.

In T20 cricket, after Malan took over, Irish players spoke regularly of the greater confidence and clarity with which they were playing, particularly with the bat. A timid, boundary-lacking display in the 2021 World Cup defeat to Namibia gave way to a more free-flowing approach in 2022, Lorcan Tucker arguably the biggest beneficiary as he embarked on a career-best run in short-form cricket.

In Test matches, Malan was at the helm for all three of Ireland’s victories in red ball cricket. Since returning to the format in 2023, Ireland have beaten Afghanistan and Zimbabwe twice, positioning themselves as the best of the three-lowest ranked full members despite not playing regular First Class cricket. In all of those wins, particularly the 2024 victory over Afghanistan, Ireland looked a better-prepared group with well-thought plans and the ability to execute. The entire coaching staff deserves credit, but Malan was ultimately the man at the top of the tree.

50-over cricket has been a battle. Ireland failed to qualify for the 2023 World Cup in brutal fashion during that year’s qualifiers, losing to Oman and Scotland ahead of a make-or-break tie with Sri Lanka that ended in a predictable defeat.

Ireland really ought to have avoided those qualifiers by reaching the 2023 World Cup automatically. In the old Super League, they threw away winning positions in a pair of ODIs against New Zealand in 2022. Before Malan’s time, Ireland only won two of nine contests against Afghanistan, the Netherlands and Zimbabwe. When they were forced to the qualifiers in Zimbabwe, they spent the build-up playing a Test match at Lord’s instead of arriving early to acclimatise. Most of the above was not Malan’s fault, and the latter point was likely behind his frustrated comment on the eve of the event that conditions were vastly different to what was expected.

Since then, Ireland have played 15 ODIs in three years. Five were lost to weather, with Ireland winning four and losing six. It’s not a horrendous record, but neither is it a winning one.

Off the pitch, it’s worth assessing how Malan was seen by his players. How did he command the dressing room?

Coming in after Graham Ford, his softly-spoken compatriot, Malan was a more direct communicator. He valued honesty, if not toughness, in a high performance environment.

Not long into his tenure, one player said he wouldn't go for a beer with him but he respected his knowledge. Another figure once described how Malan discussed dismissals with batters, chopping his two hands together to indicate a high level of accountability. Some players liked it. Some didn’t and are happy to see him go.

‘Intense’ is a word used by the cohort that fell into the latter camp. Following those difficult 2023 qualifiers, players relayed back that the environment became too intense. Figures within Cricket Ireland said that the coach was receptive to the feedback.

On the flip side, some senior players admired the honesty. They enjoyed knowing exactly where they stood.

Most players respected Malan’s technical knowledge, preparation and eye for detail. It’s been said on multiple occasions that his bread and butter was throwing balls when working with batters. One senior player suggested that if he and Wilson swapped roles, Malan working on batting plans and technique on a full-time basis, with Wilson taking on more of the man-management as head coach, that would be a good use of resources. The latter part of that hypothetical has ultimately come to pass.

It is understood that there is no signed agreement on where Malan will work next. Ireland made this move with more certainty on their part, moving to Wilson who is generally popular with the playing group.

While there is some confusion as to why applications weren’t sought for the role, or why the CI high performance committee wasn’t consulted on the decision (some members are questioning the point of the committee’s existence), Wilson is widely seen as a good appointment. He is both a continuity pick while offering a different communication and leadership style. He knows Irish cricket for all its warts and won’t require an adjustment period prior to his first assignment against Afghanistan. His contract is a permanent one with performance markers that allow for reviews into the length of his tenure.

The reasons behind Malan’s departure may well never be definitively revealed. It remains unclear if he himself was given feedback on the contract decision. CI are taking the stance of moving on and getting on board team Gary.

Malan had his detractors in the cricketing public, plenty fairly or otherwise blaming him for Ireland’s recent trend of blooding South African-born players. It is understood that Wilson is keen to fix the pathway issues that see Ireland relying on overseas talent.

But plenty equally appreciate the moments over which Malan presided. Test match victories. A best ever run at a T20 World Cup. Ending on the high of a first victory over India.

Ireland coaches before him, and likely a few more to come, were not adequately set up for success due to the country’s lack of resources, making it tricky to objectively judge his tenure. Cricket Ireland, though, have made the judgement that it’s time to move on.

Which, at the end of the day, is the only opinion that matters.