With the Ashes on the line in the late afternoon sun at Manchester, Chris Woakes produced a magical spell with the old ball to put England in the ascendancy after the first day at Emirates Old Trafford.
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There have been moments in the past few years where you wondered whether Chris Woakes would play another Test. Forever stuck in the queue behind Stuart Broad, James Anderson and more recently Ollie Robinson at home, without the express pace of Mark Wood, Olly Stone or Jofra Archer, or even viewed as a point-of-difference bowler like Matt Potts, Saqib Mahmood and Jamie Overton have been regarded, there has seldom been room for Woakes in recent times.
He’s been unlucky with injuries – he played one Test across the 2021 and 2022 home summers – but also with the timing of his career. The obvious successor to Broad and Anderson, but kept in the shadows by the pair’s freakish longevity. His statistics as an all-rounder, in home Tests at least, merit having a side built around him. But in the same way his path to becoming attack leader was blocked by two generational talents, his route to becoming England’s No. 1 all-rounder has long been obstructed by another in Ben Stokes.
A combination of the above and a noticeable drop-off in potency away from home has led to a slightly directionless Test career, averaging four to five Tests a year over the course of a decade.
There is a notion that Woakes is only effective when it swings, which is to do down the most essential of skills in a bowler’s arsenal, particularly in England. Woakes’ double-wicket burst to dismiss Australia’s pair of hulking all-rounders came with a ball that was 62 overs old. To dismiss Green, he utilised a wobble-seam delivery that nipped back in; t0 dismiss Marsh, he angled the seam towards the slip cordon looking to swing it away, with the ball just holding its line enough to take the outside edge. To the naked eye, Woakes so often gets the ball to move more than England’s other bowlers. He is not an incidental beneficiary of the conditions around him, he is the producer of them.
Woakes now has ten wickets this series – nine of them have been top seven batters with the other being Alex Carey pushed down to No.8. Seven of those ten wickets have been with a ball between 49 and 63 overs old – he is getting good players out when conditions are supposedly not in his favour.
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It is true that Woakes is far less effective overseas with balls that move less over the course of an innings. It makes the fact that prior to this match Woakes had played more Ashes Tests in Australia than in England – though this is mainly down to an injury incurred in 2015 and a post-World Cup dip in form in 2019 – a bizarre statistical quirk.
Before this Test, just after he’d put in an outstanding performance in a win that kept the series alive, Woakes was naturally asked whether or not he would feature in England’s next overseas assignment, a five-Test tour of India. Woakes played down his prospects, self-effacingly remarking, “My away record speaks for itself.”
A general focus on what’s coming up next rather than the here and now has been a feature of his Test career. For so long regarded as the Next Anderson only to then be disregarded on account of his age. Now at 34, he is finally having his moment against Australia as he and England live in the present.
