Eoin Morgan reveals meeting between senior England players ended Alex Hales World Cup hopes

Morgan says a breakdown in trust meant action had to be taken over Hales.
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Will Macpherson2 May 2019

England captain Eoin Morgan has said Alex Hales’ actions in failing two recreational drugs tests showed “complete disregard” for values his team had built in recent years and “created a lack of trust”.

As a result, the decision to drop Hales from England’s World Cup squad was unanimous.

Speaking ahead of England’s first international engagement of the summer, against Ireland at Malahide, Morgan sought to clarify how the decision was made to leave Hales out of the match against Ireland, series against Pakistan and the World Cup.

Like all but a few who were bound by confidentiality from the ECB’s recreational drugs policy, Morgan learnt of Hales’ indiscretion through the media last Friday.

Hales omitted from the England World Cup squad.
Action Images via Reuters

“When the news broke on Friday I found out like everybody else, there was a concern around what was going on with Alex,” he said.

“I was certainly one guy who texted him after the first game he missed for Notts, asking how he was and if he needed any support or help.

“He assured me everything was fine and there was no concern and that he would see me in Cardiff. When the news broke the day before we met in Cardiff, it left me to think about how this would affect the team and the culture in particular.

“We've worked extremely hard on our culture in the last 18 months since the Bristol incident [when Hales and Ben Stokes were involved in a late-night brawl].

"It really did open our eyes to ourselves, not just being judged as performers but how we are as role models who really need to step up and recognise that’s a huge part of our job.”

As a result, Morgan met with senior players Joe Root, Jos Buttler, Moeen Ali, Chris Woakes and Stokes on Saturday at their camp in Cardiff to discuss the issue.

Root among those to meet and discuss Hales' future.
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“Unfortunately Alex's actions have shown complete disregard for those values,” he said. “This has created a lack of trust between Alex and the team.

"On Saturday we got together as a group of senior players to discuss the effect the news coming out would have on the team and the culture. We all agreed the best decision for the team was for Alex to be deselected.

"I relayed this to Ashley Giles [the managing director of English cricket], because we don't have final say, I can only give the view in the changing room and how guys feel.

“To deselect him we felt was the best decision simply because he did not adhere to everything that we have been working towards for a very long time.”

Hales is said to have cut a distant figure before leaving England’s training camp having been informed of the decision earlier this week. Morgan said he had not spoken to the player but knew he was “disappointed”.

Morgan said that the drawbacks of retaining Hales in the squad outweighed the benefits of a player good enough to have scored six ODI centuries.

"Yeah we are,” he said. “We will need at least 15 men to win that World Cup. For whatever way Alex would have dealt with it, the other 14 people would have been dragged down and that would have been quite a weight taken forward, and that didn’t outweigh his performance.”

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