England v Bangladesh: The Fall and Rise and Fall of Alex Hales

 

England v Bangladesh

The Fall and Rise and Fall of Alex Hales

September 13^th  2016

If there is one player who has epitomised the violent swings of fortune of the England team over the last year, it is Alex Hales.

An up and down year for England took another couple of unexpected tangents. First, after going 4-0 in the ODI series and setting a world-record score to boot, the series came to a shambolic end with a heavy defeat in the final ODI, followed by being utterly trounced in the only T20 as they staggered, drunkenly from 56-0 after 39 balls and threatening to cross 200, to 135-7. Pakistan won with more than five overs to spare and, as in the Test series, finished on a high and with the momentum. Those last two games of the international summer showed how England who, two games earlier, had looked sublimely untroubled in scoring 444-3 in 50 overs, can swing from brilliant to mediocre. There was some justification in the ODI, with a raft of changes introduced to rest some players and give a chance to others. Less good news was that with Adil Rashid and Moeen Ali being rested, Liam Dawson registered the worst-ever figures for an England debutant in an ODI. 8-0-72-2 was fairly eye-watering, although it is as well to record that just below Liam Dawson in the “worst-ever debut” list come Andrew Flintoff and Steve Finn, who both turned out okay.

While many regard Liam Dawson as the best young spinner in the country, it is interesting that, despite the lamentations to the contrary, the selectors have almost an embarrassment of choice of spinners for the two winter tours. Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid are assumed to be givens. Behind them, Ollie Rayner at Middlesex and Jack Leach at Somerset are causing mayhem from unexpected directions and both demand a call-up on the back of form, heavy wicket-taking and consistency. Ollie Rayner’s last three County Championship matches have produced 23 wickets (combined figures of 23-322). Middlesex fans have been frustrated for years knowing that he can attack and be lethal, but has all too often been used in a holding role to speed up the overrate and got overly defensive. If the selectors want to go for a form spinner, Ollie Rayner is currently the most destructive in the country.

If Ollie Rayner’s 23-322 since the summer break in the CC have put down a marker, what of Jack Leach’s 27 wickets in Somerset’s four matches since the break, including 2x6-for and 1x5-for? His wickets have been more expensive (27-529), but he has had to bowl long spells and put in hard grind in a much weaker attack than Ollie Rayner. With 56 First Class wickets, he is joint fifth in the wicket-taking list for 2016, somewhat ahead of Ollie Rayner, who is eleventh. Jack Leach was taking wickets in quantity even early in the season and has been consistent and threatening all summer.

Apart from Rayner and Leach, many fans have pointed to the golden summer that Gareth Batty is having with 41 wickets @ 32.3 and suggesting that he is the one outstanding candidate to head the attack in India. It is twelve years since he acted as unwilling stooge to Brian Lara’s 400* in Antigua: although picked twice more as cover for an injured Ashley Giles and briefly re-commissioned in ODIs in 2009, the 52-4-185-2 in that Antigua Test really finished him as an international bowler. However, fans will recall how Shaun Udal was plucked from pre-retirement obscurity in 2006 and won a Test in India and how both Pat Pockock and Peter Such were re-commissioned some years earlier with surprising success.

Many pundits will say that Liam Dawson (15 wickets @ 46.8) is the best young spinner in the country, while Simon Kerrigan has been disappointing this year (25 wickets @ 45.4), he has been a consistent performer over many years, while Zafar Ansari, who was picked as a spinner for last winter’s tours, is finally coming back to the sort of form that saw him selected, after injury saw him miss the start of the season (22 wickets @ 30.7, with 7-164 in his last two matches). Several other names are mentioned as promising spinners.

What though has really exercised the minds of pundits and fans is the latest extraordinary turn in the Alex Hales story. After a rather unhappy Test series in South Africa (to be fair, he was far from the only one to struggle with the bat), followed by a record-equalling ODI series against the same opponents, with his five consecutive 50s, crowned with a glorious century, he took a calculated risk and, when many fans thought that only heavy run-scoring in early season would save his place, decided to take off the first few games of the season. Obdurate performances to try to save games in a Nottinghamshire side that was unravelling fast, saved his Test place and a big fifty in each Test v Sri Lanka seemed to mark his breakthrough. The one thing that he failed to achieve was to get those last few runs to obtain a maiden Test century, but 5 half centuries is one more than Nick Compton (who reached 50 only 4 times in his 16 Tests), three more than Sam Robson (who reached 50 only twice in 7 Tests) and four more than Adam Lyth (who reached 50 just once in his 7 Tests): failure is relative here.

However, a poor series with the bat against Pakistan in the Tests led to many writing his obituary again, particularly after two failures in the first two ODIs, only to come back with the highest score by an Englishman in ODIs (and, unlike Robin Smith, whose record he broke, he is as English as you can get, born in Hillingdon in Middlesex). 743 runs @ 61.9 in 2016, with 4x50 and 3x100 is astonishing by any standards, more so even from a player who, only a few months before, was being written-off as a failure in ODIs.

However, with many questioning whether or not he had done enough to hang on to his Test place and the pundits saying, reluctantly, that he had probably done just enough, mainly due to the lack of obvious alternatives, Alex Hales has come up with a new surprise by withdrawing from the Bangladesh series on security grounds. It is only two Tests and, with the selectors having the habit of experimenting when England visit Bangladesh, it is quite possible that he would have been “rested” anyway. However, things have changed radically since the Pakistan Tests finished. Suddenly, it looks as if Alex Hales has ended his Test career.

There are several top-three batsmen who have made big runs this season. Tom Westley, with 1427 runs @ 62.0; Ben Duckett, with 1268 runs @ 57.6; Nick Browne, with 1196 runs @ 52.0; Nick Gubbins, with 1191 runs @ 59.6 and Chris Dent, with 1133 runs @ 45.3 have all shown some prolific form, not to mention a young sprog called Marcus Trescothick (1252 runs @ 52.2). While Westley is a #3 who could open, if necessary, the others are all genuine openers.

All but two of the above though have the not-inconsiderable issue of having made their runs against the much weaker, Division 2 attacks. Marcus Trescothick would no longer tour even if the selectors were to ask a 40-year-old to come back after ten years out of Tests. And Nick Gubbins, although he has his fans, has not been as eye-catching as some others, but will still be hoping that perhaps he gets the nod or, at very least, to be parked off-shore ready for a call-up on a Lions tour.

Two players have though really caught the eye.

A sequence of scores of 89, 57*, 114, 100*, 26, 17 & 56 by 19 year old Haseeb Hameed has led to a massive band-waggon calling for him to be picked for the Bangladesh tour. Having made his First Class debut at the end of the 2015 season, he has played just 18 matches, but his last eight have produced 4x100 and 5x50, boosting his average to 51.3. Bangladesh would be a great place to blood him before a far more politically charged tour to India where the pressures, on and off the field, will be far greater.

Another suitor for Alex Hale’s position is Keaton Jennings, another young player – this time 24 years old – whose record prior to this season was more likely to lead to calls for him to return to South Africa. However, he has committed his future to Durham, is now qualified for England and, despite Chester-le-Street’s  famously green pitches, is the run-away leading run-scorer in the country with 1565 runs @ 71.1 (almost 450 more than Haseeb Hameed, in three more innings) and has an impressive seven First Class centuries.

Quite possibly Alex Hales had not bet on a First Division opener who was already having a good season, scoring 201* on a famously tricky pitch, less than 48 hours after he had surrendered his opening position.

What will be interesting is to see if the selectors take both Keaton Jennings and Haseeb Hameed to accompany Alistair Cook in Bangladesh, with one of them, or maybe even both if the other is given a chance with the tricky #3 slot, having the chance to seal his place in the starting XI in India. The selectors have said that there will be no reprisals for either Hales or Eoin Morgan for missing the tour but, were Hales’s replacement to make a century in one of the two Tests, it would inconceivable that we would see Hales re-gaining his place in India.

While it is certain that Alex Hales will return to the ODI set-up in India, the chances great are that he will not even be in the Test party unless whoever replaces him has a dire tour. With England needing a stable opening partner for Alistair Cook and Nick Compton who might just have been pushed up the order instead, out of the picture, yet another player will have a chance to make a claim to be Andrew Strauss’s definitive replacement.

Rumour has it that a decision had already been made to go with Haseem Hameed this winter instead of Alex Hales. Maybe Hales just felt that he knew which way the wind was blowing and decided to bow-out gracefully, rather than be dropped. Whatever way it blows, the announcement of the touring parties is going to be met with great interest.