Pragmatism prevails as Alex Hales gets his second England chance at last

On one level England’s decision to add Alex Hales to their T20 World Cup party was simple. Jason Roy suffered a collapse in form, Jonny Bairstow somehow suffered a broken leg playing golf and in Hales they had a proven match-winner ready to go.

There was a strong case to say the Nottinghamshire opener should have been included before Bairstow’s unfortunate slip on the third tee at Pannal, such has been his proficiency in the shortest formats – those long levers and that impressive strike rate – plus a particular liking for Australian pitches during his spells in the Big Bash League.

But things have not been so straightforward over the past three years, of course, not since the Guardian revealed in April 2019 that Hales was serving a clandestine 21-day ban for failing a second recreational drugs test; the 50-over World Cup – a project England had spent four years building towards – was only a few weeks away.

The story was driven by public interest, not least given the public themselves had been misled when his early-season absence was explained by his county as a case of being “unavailable for selection for personal reasons” and not, as it transpired, the result of an England and Wales Cricket Board/Professional Cricketers’ Association screening system that was well intentioned but ill-conceived.

This much was admitted when the regulations were quietly changed the following year. Now the system – one that treats recreational drugs as a wellbeing issue initially – sees a ban and full public disclosure triggered only come the third strike, not the previous halfway house on two that left only a select few in the know: Tom Harrison, then ECB chief executive, his PCA equivalent, David Leatherdale, Ashley Giles, director of