Having dropped left-hand batsman Dawid Malan from the squad for the second Test of the series at Lords's, National Selector Ed Smith has come out and stated defense of his much talked about decision. 

Malan struggled in the first game at Edgbaston against the spin of Ravichandran Ashwin and the seam and swing of Mohammed Shami and Ishant Sharma. He has been going through a very bad phase with the bat and hasn't done anything of note either side of his hundred at Perth in the Ashes earlier this year.

Dropping Malan ahead of Lord's, Ed Smith was quoted telling at the time, "Dawid has not found his best rhythm this season, and it may be that his game is better suited to overseas conditions."

England have selected young Ollie Pope and there have been opinions around that this could well be it for Malan at the highest level but Ed Smith doesn't think that way. 

"He(Malan) has had a full calendar year of Test cricket and he knows where he is at. He has shown that he can play very well at Test level," said Smith and added, "He showed with that excellent Test hundred at Perth that he can play very well on the international stage. We talked about general form which everyone understands and then specifically he has aptitudes that not everyone has."

"Not that many people score hundreds at Perth, I know Ben Stokes has and Brian Luckhurst scored a hundred at Perth but not that many Englishmen have looked as comfortable at the WACA as Dawid did."

Ed Smith reiterating his faith that "When a player has been left out there should be clear communication on the way they can improve in order to get back into contention", talked about how he sees Malan as a player moving forward and said, "Moving forward we talked about how his strengths could come into play, but in no way did I mean that line as an implicit criticism, he has scored over 10,000 first-class runs in England and the guy has shown he can play very well on different surfaces."

"But in an England shirt, one of the things he has done distinctively is play very well in very alien conditions so I wanted to reaffirm to him that one of the things we are looking at is having the right players for the right conditions, which is not horses for courses. I bridle at that sense because you wouldn't play someone who can only play well at one ground, that is not going to happen. We are not interested in going back to picking one player for one Test."

"However clearly Andrew Strauss(Director of English Cricket) has outlined that England's form away from home has not been ideal and clearly that is something we are looking at to have players who can create results at home and also abroad."

(Inputs from Cricbuzz)