England have included Nottinghamshire batter Joe Clarke among their list of Covid reserves for next month’s Test series against West Indies, which appears to indicate that his international blacklisting is over.
Clarke, 25, was informed in 2019 that he was not under consideration for international selection – at that stage he was an England Lions regular – because of revelations in the rape trial of his former Worcestershire team-mate Alex Hepburn.
Hepburn was found guilty of raping a woman in April 2017 and sentenced to five years in prison in 2019 but has since been released.
Neither Clarke nor Tom Kohler-Cadmore, a former Worcestershire team-mate now with Yorkshire, were suspected of an offence, but it emerged in court that they had been involved in a WhatsApp group that included disrespectful messages about women, which the judge said amounted to a "pathetic sexist game”.
As a result, both were found guilty of bringing the game into disrepute by the ECB, fined and suspended for four matches. Kohler-Cadmore was selected as part of a 55-man squad in 2020, but Clarke has not been involved since 2019, and the ECB have said little about the matter.
The ECB’s stance appears to have softened with Clarke’s inclusion on England’s list of reserves for the much-changed squad for the West Indies tour.
Clarke will not travel to the Caribbean unless a player goes down with Covid or injury before the touring party departs on February 24.
Clarke has long been considered a player of promise, and has a first-class average of 37.6, including 18 centuries. In recent years he has been prolific on the T20 franchise circuit, and is currently at the Pakistan Super League playing for Karachi Kings.
Despite interest from franchises, Clarke chose not to place his name in the auction for the Indian Premier League, which takes place this weekend, in a bid to play County Championship cricket and push his case for England selection this summer. His inclusion in this small, unannounced group appears to make that eminently possible.
