We have been here before with Alex Hales, England’s long-levered talent in danger of squandering another opportunity
Andrew Miller27-Apr-2019And so it begins, that quadrennial sense of self-immolation that tends to consume each and every England World Cup campaign – those with the best-laid plans, and those with no plan whatsoever.Alex Hales’ latest fall from grace, while making for dramatic and untimely headlines, does not have to unhinge everything that has been so good about England’s one-day cricket since the 2015 World Cup. But it does, at a stroke, puncture that sense of collective drive and responsibility that the squad has been so keen to foster in the course of the past few months.Everything about England’s cricket, we have been told, has been building towards this summer’s World Cup, often at the expense of all else around it. Every ounce of focus has been channelled into the collective goal, of ending a 44-year wait for that maiden global 50-over trophy, and delivering the sort of home-soil carnival triumph to rival those now-sepia scenes of 2005.Well, whatever the memo may have been in England’s various team meetings in recent months, Hales might as well have been staring out of the window, whistling Dixie.ALSO READ: England’s World Cup batting stocks: Hales down, Vince upThe frustration is that Hales has been guilty of the same sort of base-level stupidity that has been holding his career back since that first flexing of his long levers more than a decade ago. The pity is that, at the age of 30, and having by his own admission spent too much of his career in the margins of the limelight, he has been unable to persuade himself that this summer, of all summers, is the one in which to knuckle down and make his presence felt while he is still in his absolute prime.Hales is already serving his 21-day suspension for recreational drug use, and so he will be available again for England before the World Cup gets underway. And given that the devil you know is often the better version, the selectors may yet take the view that the collective goal is too important for Hales’ bench-strength to be sacrificed for the sake of making a point.But it’s also clear that patience is wearing extraordinarily thin with a player who has already had one enormous brush with career oblivion in the recent past, and in fact still has a four-game suspended sentence hanging over him after the Cricket Disciplinary Commission hearing in December.Hales was not arrested for his part in the Bristol fracas in September 2017 that left his team-mate Ben Stokes facing a custodial sentence for affray – for which he was finally acquitted some 11 months, and a missed Ashes tour, later. That grim episode was, Stokes recently told ESPNcricinfo, perhaps “the best thing that has ever happened” to him, for the manner in which it obliged him to assess his priorities, count his blessings, and redouble his efforts to be the best sportsman he could possibly be in the finite parameters of his athletic prime.Hales, by contrast, slipped out of the side door on that fateful night – and you wonder if, in hindsight, that was the worst possible outcome for a player who has spent most of his career deferring his responsibilities.
I need to get my head down and put in a string of performances for Notts to put pressure on for the World CupAlex Hales in 2014
Hales was found to have lied to police about his involvement in the fracas – at one stage of the trial, it was even suggested that the worst of the injuries suffered by Stokes’ co-defendant, Ryan Ali, was inflicted by a kick to the head from Hales – and perhaps most heinously from a team point of view, he spent the morning after Stokes’ arrest playing golf while his team-mate was still in custody, seemingly oblivious of the imperative to inform the England management of what had gone on.None of this makes Hales a bad person per se – he is, in fact, hugely personable, gregarious and very easy to warm to, even if the tabloids now take delight in prefacing every report about his activities with “Cricketing Bad Boy”, whether that pertains to certain lewd activities on social media or a recent break-up with his girlfriend – none of which is strictly our business, except of course, it adds to that sense of a sportsman who isn’t as focused on his defining hour as he should be.But again, and alas, none of that is especially new. It’s been eight years since Hales first played for England, as part of the T20 generation that emerged from the wreckage of the 2011 World Cup, and five years since he blitzed a remarkable 116 not out from 64 balls to beat Sri Lanka in a group-stage match at the World T20 in Bangladesh.But to date, he has played in precisely two World Cup matches – the seismic defeat to Bangladesh at Adelaide that led to England being dumped out of the tournament at the group stages, and an irrelevant postscript against Afghanistan at a soggy Sydney four days later. He timed his run too late on that occasion too, untrusted by the management on account of an indefinable fecklessness, and he’s in severe danger of doing exactly the same now.For many years on Twitter, Hales had as a tagline at the top of his bio, “Notts and England cricketer” and “FOMO sufferer”. The Fear Of Missing Out has been a defining characteristic of his career, but it has manifested itself more in missing out on the fun that comes with having a profile as an international sportsman, and not enough on the frustration of missing out on the glory.Alex Hales bats in the nets•Getty Images”It’s a big year for me, especially in terms of 50-over cricket,” Hales told me in an interview in 2014, on the eve of that last World Cup. “I need to get my head down and put in a string of performances for Notts to put pressure on for the World Cup … That’s my aim for the season, to try and get into that squad.”Word for word, Hales could have uttered those exact sentiments at any stage in the past 12 months, and almost certainly did. The fact that he has been unable to back up his intentions with deeds is instructive and damning.”I’m only 25,” he said back then. “I’ve still got time on my side. Just about.”Well, he’s 30 now, and the clock is ticking furiously. For all his record-wrecking potential and full-beam grins, if Hales has blown his chance for this summer, you can be sure there won’t be a third opportunity to fulfil his huge and frustrating potential.