Tri-series, where Sri Lanka involved heavy defeats in limited over cricket and went down in international rankings. Though he recovered from injuries in late December, Malinga was unavailable to South Africa series after a bout of dengue. Malinga was picked up to the Australian tour and played in the match against Prime Minister's XI. His comeback match came against Australia on 17 February 2017, where he took two wickets and two catches. Sri Lanka won the match by 5 wickets at the end. On 6 April 2017, during the second T20I against Bangladesh, Malinga took a hat-trick, becoming the second Sri Lankan and fifth overall to take a T20I hat-trick. With that, Malinga has taken 4 international hat-tricks, which is most by a Sri Lankan player and joint highest with Pakistani Wasim Akram. Malinga was included to the ODI squad for 2017 ICC Champions Trophy in June 2017. He played his comeback match against South Africa on 3 June 2017 at the pool match of Champions Trophy. However, his comeback was not good at all, where he finished the spell wicket less by giving 57 runs and put down a catch and was sloppy in the fielding as well. Sri Lanka suffered a heavy loss in the match by 96 runs finally. During the Indian ODI series, captain Upul Tharanga was suspended two ODIs due to slow over rate. Therefore, Chamara Kapugedera was appointed as the stand-in captain of those two ODIs. However, he aggravated a back injury during the third ODI and ruled out of the series. For the fourth ODI, Malinga was appointed stand-in captain. In the match, Malinga took his 300th ODI wicket by dismissing Virat Kohli. Despite his milestone, India scored 375 runs and Sri Lanka only managed to score 207 runs and lost the series 4–0. India won the fifth match of the series and whitewash Sri Lanka for the second consecutive time in a 5-match series. Since his comeback, Malinga was not fully effective with the ball and also with the fielding. However, he did not announce an immediate retirement and said he wanted to play international cricket for Sri Lanka until 2019 Cricket World Cup. Since his return, Malinga averaging 62.30 for each of his 10 wickets, and going at six an over, Due to his ineffective bowling, Malinga was omitted from the ODI squad for 2017–18 Pakistan series in the UAE. Due