England white-ball captain Eoin Morgan has downplayed the prospect of Alex Hales’ immediate return to the England set-up, labelling the breakdown in trust between Hales and the England squad in 2019 as “extremely dramatic.”

“Alex is in a unique position, probably in a position nobody else has found themselves in before,” said Morgan. “On the cusp of a World Cup, the huge breakdown in trust between him and the players was extremely dramatic, given the circumstances surrounding the four years and the build-up and the way things unfolded.”

Morgan added that while he has spoken to Hales since his deselection from the 2019 World Cup squad, Hales, in his opinion, showed a “complete disregard” for team values. Morgan said: “I’ve certainly spoken to Alex and certainly see an avenue for him to coming back to playing cricket but like in life and in any sport, when there’s a break down of trust, the only healer in that is time.

“It’s only been 12 or 13 months since the incident which could have cost us four years of hard work. Moving forward, time is a great healer so we will continue to assess things moving forward as we’ve spoken to Alex about. It’s obviously not about performance with Alex, Alex is a fantastic player, it’s never been discussed whether he’s good enough to be in the squad or not. Playing cricket for England is about on and off the field, values we adhere to or do our best to adhere to and Alex showed complete disregard for them.”

Morgan was also firm in standing by the original decision to deselect Hales from the World Cup squad. “I think teams in the past wouldn’t have been strong enough to make decisions like we did pre-World Cup, and then continue to stand by them post-World Cup,” added Morgan. “And I think that says a lot about the group. They feel as if they’re completely a part of something that they can take ownership about because they’ve seen the work that they’ve put in and they’ve seen results. So, they also have seen instances where players coming back into groups has the ability to take a lot of energy away and have impact on a lot of other players.”

Eoin Morgan was speaking ahead of an online event to celebrate 15 years of the Chance to Shine charity. Since 2005, over five million children have been given the opportunity to play, learn and develop through cricket thanks to the work of the charity.

This summer, donations to Chance to Shine are being matched by Charity Patron Adrian Beecroft. Please support here.