Hales keen to ‘free the arms’ after Test disappointment

England batsman Alex Hales hopes that a return to white-ball cricket will have a rejuvenating effect on his game, as it did following a tough Test debut in South Africa at the start of the year.

Hales is one of a number of England players cleared to play in NatWest T20 Blast Finals Day, with his county, Nottinghamshire, contesting the first semi-final against Northamptonshire. Hales said it would be nice to “free the arms” after four Tests against Pakistan in which he averaged 18.12 with one fifty.

Those numbers are remarkably similar to his first experience of Test cricket, when he averaged 17.00 with a high score of 60 over four appearances against South Africa. He followed that up by scoring 383 runs in five ODI innings – his breakthrough 50-over series for England – and is keen to mount a similar comeback, initially in T20 for Notts and then in the Pakistan ODIs.

“It’s going to be nice come back to what is a big day for the club and be able to free the arms,” he told ESPNcricinfo ahead of Finals Day at Edgbaston. “The last couple of training sessions have been nice to hit a white ball and put the disappointment of the Test series behind me.

“It’s a big day for the club but it’s also nice, when you have a tough time, to step out of the international arena and come back to a county you love.

“It’s a similar situation to South Africa, I had a really poor Test series and then bounced back …

continue reading in source www.espncricinfo.com