Limited-overs captain Eoin Morgan said the "door is still open" for Alex Hales to regain the trust lost in him amid the England dressing room and be back playing international cricket. 

Hales, team's longstanding opener at the time, was dropped from England's squad just prior to last year's 50-over World Cup at home on disciplinary grounds. 

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Since then, the right-hand batsman has shown terrific form in T20 leagues around the world, mainly Big Bash League (BBL) in Australia and Pakistan Super League (PSL). 

But it isn't the lack of runs that Hales was sacked for. 

"In terms of what that looks like, practically, it's human nature, it's about developing trust," ESPNcricinfo quoted Morgan as saying. "I don't think you can put a time limit on gaining back that trust, and that's not just with me, that's with every member of the squad, the backroom staff, the selectors."

"And that does take time. We're in May, so it's 11 months ago that the incident happened with Alex, so it's actually not that long ago that it happened," added the skipper at the launch of the Abu Dhabi T10. 

"What happened was actually quite considerably harmful to the environment, which obviously led to the breakdown in trust between Alex and our players, so to say, how long that will take to regain, we don't know, but certainly the door is still open for that trust to be built back up."

In the process of building that trust back, Hales' main goal would be to represent England at the T20 World Cup in Australia this October. 

But the opportunities to re-bridge that gap aren't there at the moment because of the COVID-19 shutdown. 

Even Morgan is concerned over the lack of quality preparation that England might have to endure because of the pandemic during this phase. 

"I think if the T20 World Cup goes ahead in the slot that it's been allocated at the moment, we will have certainly have played a limited amount of cricket before then," he said.

"One of the big positives before the outbreak of the virus was that the guys were going to play all of the Pakistan league, all of the IPL, all of the T20 Blast, and get a lot of exposure to T20 cricket in the build-up and hence lots of opportunity for positions."

"But I think given the circumstances, we'll have to wait and see how much cricket we play and the opportunities that land on guys' laps. They'll have to make the most of them because they are very limited ones at the moment," Morgan added. 

(Inputs from ESPNcricinfo)