England’s World Cup squad will be diminished by the absence of Alex Hales. He is perversely one of the most dynamic opening batsmen in the world in white-ball cricket, yet even without the current hullabaloo he would probably not have made England’s starting lineup on 30 May against South Africa at the Oval unless the fragile back of Jason Roy continues to play up.
Hales was a mighty, reassuring presence on the bench if there was any loss of form or fitness among the batsmen. He has hit six hundreds in ODI cricket and only Graham Gooch, Marcus Trescothick, Kevin Pietersen, Eoin Morgan and Joe Root have struck more for England. Whether Hales ever has the chance to hit more is now uncertain.
His credentials are excellent on the field; off it he has had something of a nightmare over the last 18 months. The England hierarchy has clearly lost patience. Rather than his quickfire runs they have opted for a pristine clean sheet before the World Cup starts. Hales now brings too much hassle. Ashley Giles has been decisive and swift to action.
This turn of events is not so calamitous as the late dropping of Alastair Cook just before the last World Cup, the Freddie Flintoff pedalo affair in the Caribbean in 2007, the stand-off over whether the team should go to Zimbabwe in 2003 or the bizarre late selections by England before the 1999 tournament. So there should not be too much despair among England supporters. But it is hard not to speculate whether the England and Wales Cricket Board would have been so swift and decisive if the reason for Hales’ recent withdrawal from cricket had remained restricted to the chosen few at the top of the ECB and Nottinghamshire. The action was swift and decisive only when the matter became public knowledge.
There will be some beneficiaries from this affair. The ECB’s PR department will not be so twitchy. There was some discomfort over the selection of Jofra Archer, especially when some of the players queried whether his selection was appropriate. Hales’s absence also offers relief not only to a variety of overseas bowlers but also to World Cup hopefuls such as Joe Denly and James Vince.
Denly has already been selected in the preliminary squad – unlike Archer – but as the second reserve batsman and first reserve spinner. Meanwhile Vince was picked for only the matches in Dublin and Cardiff but has now been drafted into the squad for the five ODIs against Pakistan.
On Saturday it just so happened that Vince hit a career-best 190 in a total of 331 for eight against Gloucestershire in the Royal London Cup. Last summer he failed to make the Test squad after posting a double century at Taunton but his innings two days ago has proved to be more consequential. Vince has sparkled in 50-over cricket this season when leading Hampshire and with Sam Billings, a perennial peripheral in the ODI squad, sidelined with a nasty shoulder injury, the way was open for him. It is quite possible in the matches against Pakistan and Ireland that Vince will supersede Denly as the first reserve batsman.
The danger for Hales, meanwhile, is that he dwells on how his career has hit the buffers and becomes ever more despondent. The England ODI side has become a very tight-knit group on and off the pitch but the impression has been that he was never quite part of the inner circle. Soon he will not even be a topic of conversation in that dressing room now that he has been jettisoned to the nether reaches.
He could do with some mentors. Three unlikely men come to mind: Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft. Australia’s cricket board, driven by the pervasive, volatile power of public opinion, banned them for much longer than three weeks. Their careers were in ruins. In the last couple of weeks Bancroft has been cracking centuries for Durham, Warner has been scoring freely for the Sunrisers of Hyderabad and Smith has been made captain of Rajasthan Royals.
Smith and Warner will face their challenges when they arrive in England for the World Cup and the Ashes but, as anticipated, they have made those squads without any resistance; they will front up, express a bit more contrition if necessary and play cricket. Eventually their on-field exploits will take precedence again. If they can return, so can Hales. If further encouragement is needed, he might note that Ben Duckett, the man disciplined for drenching the head of England’s greatest fast bowler with beer on the last Ashes tour, has just been recalled to international cricket.
here is surely a good case for Hales to revoke his retirement from red-ball cricket for Nottinghamshire and resume belting cricket balls out in the middle again. That is probably the best place for his rehabilitation to start, a far better one than a sofa with the TV relaying the progress of England’s World Cup campaign.