‘I would do a Will Smeed’ – Alex Hales on if he were to start as youngster again in International cricket

Alex Hales recently announced his retirement from international cricket. The right-handed batter played a crucial role at the top of the order during England’s triumphant campaign in the T20 World Cup in 2022 in Australia. He scored 212 runs in six matches at an average of 42.40 and a strike rate of 147.22. Hales has been a prominent performer in franchise tournaments as well.

In his international career, Hales played 11 Tests, 70 ODIs, and 75 T20Is for England. However, in a recent interview, the 34-year-old said that if he had the chance to rewind to his days as a 21-year-old, he would have let go of his Test cricket aspirations and focused exclusively on white-ball cricket. Hales mentioned the name of Will Smeed, who signed a white-ball-only contract for Somerset last year.

“Just with the way I play, and my instincts and my technique, I would’ve chucked my eggs into the T20 basket, for sure. I would do a Will Smeed, and fair play to him for doing that. It’s a bold decision. Hopefully, it works out for him. I think the way the game is now, you’re seeing fewer and fewer people who are exceptional at all three formats. There’s obviously a select handful who are brilliant at all three, but you see the way the game has gone – especially the last sort of five years – you see more and more specialists,” Hales told Michael Atherton during an interview on Sky Sports.

I was definitely fighting a lot of my instincts opening the batting here in England: Alex Hales

Alex Hales had a strike rate of close to 60 in red-ball first-class cricket while playing for Nottinghamshire. However, his strike rate dropped to 43.84 in the 11 Tests he played for England. Hales lauded openers Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett for excelling while playing aggressively and felt that he could have done a better job had he played his natural game in tough English conditions.

“I was definitely fighting a lot of my instincts opening the batting here in England,” Hales said. “It’s a seriously tough place to open the batting. To see the way Zak [Crawley] and Ben [Duckett] have done it this summer has been unbelievable, to go out there and play their shots. Maybe, looking back, if I could have gone about it in my natural way, I may have had a bit more success,” Hales concluded.