Alex Hales knew the risk he was taking when he opted to sit out the start of the English season but he feel fit and raring to go against Yorkshire at Trent Bridge
Jon Culley30-Apr-2016It will be four years in August since Andrew Strauss walked off the field at Lord’s after the last of his 100 Test matches, by which time it is possible that the number of opening batsmen who have attempted to step into his shoes in the England side will be almost in double figures.Alex Hales is the current incumbent. He is the eighth to have been chosen as Alastair Cook’s partner post-Strauss, following on from Nick Compton, Joe Root, Michael Carberry, Sam Robson, Jonathan Trott, Adam Lyth and Moeen Ali. It is not a role that comes with much job security. Of those discards, five or six matches is the average time it took the selectors to make a decision.Hales, therefore, is probably at the halfway stage, and given that he came home from his debut series in South Africa with a batting average of precisely 17 from four matches he is hardly in a position of strength. Some critics, notably Geoff Boycott, have already written him off.In the circumstances, then, it might have been seen as a gamble on his part to miss the opening three weeks of the county season in favour of a rest, more so with hindsight. In his absence, Lyth and Moeen have made hundreds, Robson a hundred and a double in the same match. Likewise, James Vince and Mark Stoneman, so far untried but on the selectors’ radar, have also posted three-figure scores. Hales, though, is convinced it was the right thing to do.”When I was making the decision I had to take into account that other openers could and probably would score runs but I had to do what was right for me,” he said.”Going back to the 2014 one-day tour to Sri Lanka, I’d probably had three or four weeks off in two years. On a mental and physical level I was pretty knackered.”I had a good chat with the coaches and figured the best thing to do was come back with a full tank and ready to give 100 per cent. I felt if I didn’t give myself the best chance to score runs I wouldn’t be doing myself justice.Rivals’ head start
Sam Robson (Middlesex): 363 runs at 121
Adam Lyth (Yorkshire): 153 runs at 38.25
Daniel Bell-Drummond (Kent) 128 runs at 64.00
“So I’ve had some time back at home in Buckinghamshire seeing my dad and mum and I’ve had a holiday with my girlfriend in Scotland.”I was keeping an eye on the scores and I did notice who was getting runs but I feel the ball is in my court. I feel fresh and in good form in the nets and I have a couple of games now to score some runs.”With that in mind, Hales will line up for Nottinghamshire against Yorkshire at Trent Bridge, where Root will also make his first appearance of the summer, before going head-to-head with Robson and Compton against Middlesex at Lord’s next week, after which national selector James Whitaker and his colleagues will begin to ink in names for the first Test against Sri Lanka on 19 May.At the moment, the likelihood is that he will keep his place, although he admits he does not feel particularly secure and hopes the selectors look at his white-ball form in South Africa as a reason not to make hasty decisions. While his Test match returns were modest, his five one-day internationals against the Proteas, coming soon after his maiden ODI century against Pakistan in Abu Dhabi in November, yielded scores of 57, 99, 65, 50 and 112.”I’ve had no indication of how long I might have (to prove myself in Test cricket) but if you look at the one-dayers – it took me nearly 20 games to nail that spot,” he said.”I had a poor ODI series against Australia at the end of last summer and if you average 23 after 20 games you can understand if they drop you.”Heading into the UAE I still had a point to prove in one-day cricket. So in terms of 50-over cricket it could not have really gone any better with the Pakistan series and SA was great on a personal level. They kept their faith in me and I repaid that faith.”So hopefully they will back me for the Sri Lanka Test series and I can show them that I belong at that level.”He feels, moreover, that there is some cause to be positive after the South Africa Tests, even if the numbers are not so impressive.”Obviously, the Tests did not go to plan in terms of runs but I learned a lot from the experience,” he said. “For a debut series it does not come much tougher than SA away.”But I didn’t feel out of my depth. If you look at my dismissals it was more often than not me getting myself out, which in a strange way I would probably rather be the case. I wasn’t thinking ‘this bowler’s got me on toast here, this bowler’s too good for me.’ It was me making mistakes, which I can do something about.”Alex Hales’ first Test innings ends at the hands of Dale Steyn•Getty Images
His weakness, he accepts, is in shot selection, which presents a tough challenge for a player with naturally aggressive instincts.”I’m going to have to improve in terms of managing my attacking instincts because I still want to be an attacking player and it is about knowing the time to do it,” he said.”There will be times when I need to rein myself in but I still want to hit the bad balls for four. It is about making better decisions outside off stump. I want to keep improving in all formats but the aim this summer is to try to nail down that that Test spot.”In that respect, Hales has undergone a change of mindset since his early days as an England player, entering the arena as a Twenty20 specialist at 22 years old and making 99 from 68 balls against West Indies in only his fifth appearance. At that stage, the lucrative possibilities offered by making himself a specialist in the short format were at the forefront of his thinking.But then came 2013, two years after he had topped 1,000 first-class runs for the first time, when he averaged a paltry 13.94 in the four-day format.”I was focussing on T20, wanting to be the best in the world in that format and for while it worked because I had the number one spot for a year or so in the T20 rankings”But after 2013 I went away to the Big Bash in Australia and I started to think ‘I’m not about that – I want to be good in all three formats.'”So that winter I made a real conscious effort to prioritise four-day cricket when I came back. And as it happens by doing that it improved my technique and improved my one-day game.”The challenge for me is to open in all formats. There is only David Warner who has been able to do that in international cricket and it is a tough challenge. The skill sets are pretty different opening in T20 compared with Tests, for example, but it is something I’m striving to master.”If Hales has learned to broaden his horizons, he also knows not to look too far ahead.”That comes from experience,” he said “When I was younger, in my first couple of years at Notts, I would be going into a game thinking ‘I’ve got to score runs’ and if you do that you end up over-thinking everything and going away from what you naturally do as a player. I’ve got better at staying in the present.”So I’m not going into these two games for Notts with any targets. Being successful comes down to doing everything right before the game – getting your practice right, your skills right.”I have practised intensively this week and I feel like my game is in good order. I’ve done all I can off the field and behind the scenes to go into the game with confidence.”The break has done me good and made me hungry to succeed in these two games. But you can’t think about the end results. If think about the process instead and how to get there, the rest should take care if itself.”