Chris Woakes ‘hits base’ on Test recall after a winter of white ball focus

“It’s similar to 2019, isn’t it?” noted Chris Woakes, looking at the 2023 schedule with his home Ashes series and a 50-over World Cup in the next six months. To say his eyes widened would be an understatement.

Four years later, he remains a factor for both, but his position in white and red ball is very different. After missing the entire summer of 2022 with a cartilage problem in his left knee – eventually rectified by surgery in late July – Woakes’ Test and limited-overs careers took off on divergent paths.

“It was a bit of a shock to the system,” said Woakes of Warwickshire’s an innings, 14-run win in which he took 2 for 28 and 3 for 59, sending down a total of 32 overs. There was stiffness from the grind, but it was the good kind of pain.

“I’ve had a pretty good winter with the World Cup win and a few tours away with England and stuff. But it’s always nice to come back with what’s to come in the summer. It’s a big summer for English cricket , it’s nice to get a red ball back in hand and play red-ball cricket and feel relatively fresh.

If all goes well, Woakes will be on that plane to India to defend England’s ODI crown. As for his involvement in the Test side, there is still some more to be done.

So before the start of the summer he called up Stokes to see what he had to work on and to get a full picture of the current ethos.

“It’s good to just touch the basics,” Woakes said. “I called him and talked to him to see if there was anything I needed to change. But he was happy for me to just go ahead, do what I normally do and he was like, ‘get yourself back’ in it , play some county cricket.” Of course, he couldn’t give me any guarantees about playing in the first Ashes Test, but he said if you play well and are around red-ball cricket, you are likely to be there or thereabouts.

“Because I haven’t been in the area with the guys and the way it’s changed since Brendon and he took over, it seemed like a sensible move to just touch base before I started my season. Just to see if there was something I had to change.” All that is mentioned. Of course you hear all the noise from outside, but I’m sure there are still messages coming from the dressing room that aren’t leaked or anything.”

Woakes admitted there was an element of jealousy in watching how much fun the Test side has, even though he’s had just as much fun and much more global success with the limited overs side, under Eoin Morgan and now Jos Buttler.

“It’s the way it’s been, isn’t it? Because the white-ball team had done so well over the last few years, and then we struggled a bit as a Test squad. Now it’s kind of almost turned the tables with the Test boys who are having a great time and winning cricket matches and doing it in such a way.

“Of course you want to be a part of that. I don’t regret anything that happened before. Any chance you get to play for England is a privilege and an honour. Don’t leave home too great.”

It’s important to dwell on those last performances “in the Whites” as the three match series against the West Indies is a peculiar anomaly. England came off a humiliating 4-0 defeat in the Ashes, with no coach or director of cricket following the sacking of Chris Silverwood and Ashley Giles. Joe Root was about to relinquish the captain’s armband – something he would eventually do when he returned from this tour – and James Anderson and Stuart Broad had been dropped.

It fell to Woakes to take on a more senior role during the journey, but an injury to Mark Wood in the first test and Ollie Robinson’s fitness issues meant he had to take on a much greater workload as well. He took just five wickets over a whopping 93.5 overs. Only in retrospect can he see it for what it is: one tour too many at the end of a grueling winter schedule that began with the 2021 World Cup and a tour of Australia. Both with strict Covid restrictions that had a debilitating effect on his physical and mental wellbeing.

“I was pretty gutted by that West Indies series,” Woakes said. “The surface we played on was horrible, to be honest. That whole winter, not only physically but mentally, was quite exhausting at the time. We had the World Cup before that in a bubble in Dubai that deflated on its own.” , then quarantine in Australia, then the Ashes we all know what happened there. And then to the West Indies.

“We were trying to build something new in the West Indies, Joe was keen to continue as captain but Ben also had a heavy input. We were trying to push the team forward and make the changes we felt were needed. That was also drain

“When you look back you think we almost tried too hard to get it right. In the end there probably wasn’t much left to give and my left knee was struggling at the time. But you get the chance to play for England and you rip their hand off, don’t you?”

Starting with Surrey’s visit to Edgbaston on Thursday, he has three more championship games ahead of the one-off Ireland test. Even if he considers four days of playing time as a way to hone his skills for the white-ball challenges ahead, the primary focus is making sure he pleads loud enough to be a part of something special, like England’s first Ashes win. since 2015.

“I don’t see it as if I’m desperate to have another crack and prove something because I feel throughout my career that I’ve proven what I’m capable of,” he said. “But absolutely, I would love to be part of an England team that plays against Australia in a home Ashes series. It’s an incredible series, home or away. In this current team there is a huge opportunity, if we do it right over a five-game series, that we could win a home Ashes series, so you want to give yourself the best chance of being part of that team.

“I don’t expect to run back into the team by any means, but I feel that with my experience, my record in England, if I can get some performances early in the season for Warwickshire in the next couple of games then that gives me hopefully a chance to be in and around the team.”