Somewhat after the Lord Mayor’s show that was Pakistan’s bewildering victory against India in the Champions Trophy final comes a Twenty20 series between England and South Africa starting at Hampshire’s Ageas Bowl on Wednesday. It is a chance for Eoin Morgan’s beaten semi-finalists to get back in the international saddle.

This is not all of them, of course. With the Test series against the Proteas next month taking precedence over this short, sharp and slightly contextless three-match encounter, Joe Root, Ben Stokes, Moeen Ali, Jake Ball and Adil Rashid have been given a full breather. Mark Wood and Jonny Bairstow will also duck out after one and two games respectively, joining the rest in tuning up for Test duty in the pink-ball county round that starts next week.

If such a selectorial game of musical chairs gives rise to questions about the dilution of the international game in a money-chasing sardine-tin of a schedule, it does at least, on a practical level, give Morgan and the coaching staff a closer look at some of the next best white-ball cricketers as they dust themselves down from a campaign that started so promisingly before the slap round the face that was an eight-wicket defeat by the eventual winners.

And so while ticket-holders for Southampton, Taunton and Cardiff this week may have raised an eyebrow when a semi‑skimmed England squad was named, they may yet be able to say they were there at the start of a great career as five uncapped players – Dawid Malan, Liam Livingstone, Mason Crane, Tom Curran and Craig Overton – are given a chance to impress.

At 29 Malan is the elder statesman among them and, despite Andy Flower, the Lions head coach, consistently pushing the Middlesex left-hander’s case behind the scenes after a glut of runs for the second string in the last two years, only one call-up has come along, when he went unused in a Twenty20 game against Sri Lanka last summer.

“When you look at the current England team, there are just no weak places in it,” said Malan before the new-look squad trained at the Ageas Bowl on Monday. “There is so much talent around, with guys scoring runs and pushing hard to challenge those above them. It is all about putting the pressure on and hoping to take your chance.

“It is an honour to play for your country, it is not a right. And they shouldn’t just hand out caps for fun. But if the time is right and they think you’re the right player, then hopefully it works out.”

Malan was born in Roehampton and grew up in South Africa before a cricketing gap year back in the UK opened up his county career. He announced himself back in 2008 with a 54-ball 103 in a Twenty20 Cup quarter-final against a Lancashire attack that included Andrew Flintoff but it is only in the past four years that he has become a consistent and much-feared run-scorer at the top of the order.

During this time Malan has also broadened his horizons as an overseas player in the Pakistan Super League. In March he went against the security advice of the Professional Cricketers’ Association by making himself available when the PSL moved from the UAE to Lahore for the final, as part of the Peshawar Zalmi side that went on to win the title.

The experience is one he looks back on with fondness and would consider repeating but after Pakistan’s captain, Sarfraz Ahmed, used his Champions Trophy victory speech on Sunday to call for touring countries to return following an eight-year hiatus – an ICC World XI is to tour the country this September – Malan remains cautious. “Everything went smoothly. We got in and out safely and the game was a fantastic spectacle. To win a Twenty20 tournament was a fantastic experience. I think a lot of steps will have to take place for cricket to get back to Pakistan,” he said. You want to see it happen but “I think for cricket to go back the threat has to be minimal and the security measures in place of the highest standard to even consider it.”