England

It sounds like plenty of England players were completely fed up with Alex Hales

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Photo by Sarah Ansell

We’ve all worked with someone who does their job perfectly well but you’re all hoping they’ll go and work somewhere else. There’s always something going on with this person and no-one’s got the energy for it any more because honestly, work’s bad enough as it is right now. You’d be better off with that work experience lad from last summer. Yeah, sure, he was almost illiterate, but he kept his head down and he always got the teas and coffees right and he didn’t bring all of this… this… shit with him.

It’s not so much that Alex Hales’ team-mates wanted him out of the World Cup squad. It’s more that when they were asked what they thought about the situation, they discovered a bottomless well of apathy from which they could draw.

Lawrence Booth reports that Hales failed to apologise during a training camp in Cardiff last weekend, and didn’t seem to have taken full responsibility for his actions either.

We’re paraphrasing here, but Trevor Bayliss can no longer be arsed with him. Bayliss would probably have acquiesced had Eoin Morgan expressed a strong desire to retain Hales and Morgan might have listened had the players made some sort of a case for his retention. It doesn’t seem like either of those things happened, so Hales isn’t playing for England this summer.

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5 comments

  1. The rest of his body must be awfully ticked off with his eyebrows, which have obviously been running the show for a while now.

  2. Honestly, I reckon we’re one hilarious run-out induced pair of simultaneous injuries to Johnny Bairstow and Jason Roy for Hales to find himself being drafted back into the England squad at some point during the World Cup. The tournament is so long that the ECB could probably get away with claiming that it is no longer Summer 2019 during the middle stages of the league part of the tournament.

    I can see why his behaviour has riled his colleagues somewhat, but it is perhaps largely due to cricket’s disappearance from mainstream culture. If the only way the sport can get traction is for drunken brawls outside nightclubs, tabloid stories about infidelity, and a failed drugs test, you would really want to be a feature player in no more than one of those tales at best.

    Maybe if England players appeared on the front and back pages of newspapers more often for what they do in their day jobs, Hales’ actions would carry less meaning. As it is, he’s now one of about 3 current players known to the wider public and that has to be annoying for people who should be justifiably famous for what they actually do.

  3. The ECB is a pukka organization. They watch like hawks to determine who the best player is and then find reasons to throw him away. Be it texts to opposing team members, recreational drugs or whatever. I look forward to the day they ban Root for having one too many glasses of orange juice in the presence of impressionable five year-olds.

    1. Like all employers, the ECB are in a tough and conflicted position when they have an individual on their hands who is supremely talented but also more-or-less unmanageable.

      I don’t feel sorry for the ECB, nor do I feel that the inherent difficulties makes them above criticism for their actions viz such players, but I do recognise and understand the dilemmas and the fact that it is impossible to “get it right” in such circumstances.

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