It sounds as though the opening match of this summer’s Ashes is going to be the Battle of Wounded Knee. England’s captain Ben Stokes might hobble and grimace through a few overs but not enough to give adequate support to the big three of James Anderson, Stuart Broad and Ollie Robinson on a swinging ground.
It was timely then – high time indeed – that Chris Woakes batted fluently in what was, absurd though it may seem for a fine all-rounder near his prime, his first red-ball innings since March last year. He had a left knee injury which kept him out the whole of last summer, played only white-ball for England in the winter and missed out in Warwickshire’s innings victory last week over Kent.
Woakes’s 27 off 37 balls was exactly the innings which England will need if it is a low-scoring series. He came in when Warwickshire were being devoured by Surrey’s seamers at 93 for six and with ever-increasing fluency he shared in the highest stand of the home side’s innings with the very promising left-hander Dan Mousley. Warwickshire will post some sort of score against the county champions.
After a few forward defensives, under high cloud and floodlights, with the ball swinging and once jagging between his bat and pad early on, Woakes was away with boundaries steered to third man like Joe Root and clipped to fine-leg. He might even have been watching the ball as he hooked the only six of the day.
When England began the first Test of the last Ashes series here in 2019, it was billed as “Fortress Edgbaston”. Australia had not won a game in any format on this ground since 2004 and wow, did somebody hate this hubris: Fortress Edgbaston. Punishment was administered within the first half-hour, when Anderson hobbled off and missed the rest of the series, leaving England with a seam attack of Broad, Woakes and Stokes: insufficient infantry on a swinging ground.
Woakes is now 34, and did not put his name into the IPL auction so he could focus on regaining his England place and a share of the urn. Last week, although he did not bat against Kent, his outswinger was working again in the second innings, and he picked up five wickets.
It is overseas conditions which Woakes has yet to master, as Anderson has done in his thirties; it is not Australia per se which gets him down. In England he averages 35 with the bat and 22 with the ball, figures that are Bothamesque/Flintoffian/Stokesian.
Last winter he was miscast, both in Australia and the West Indies, as an opening bowler: England’s previous management forgot that Test cricket involves theatre, not just bat and ball. Woakes running in to bowl England’s first ball in the Ashes series at the Gabba did not make millions of Australian babies lie awake that night or howl in terror in their cots. Woakes’s nature is too self-effacing to be confrontational or histrionic: and what does an opening bowler have to do but confront?
Woakes does not appeal if he does not think the batsman is out; he is most reluctant to ask his captain to review. In personality he is the opposite of Anderson and Broad, yet he can complement or supplement them in English conditions, very well too.
When he was pinned LBW by a nip-backer, Woakes smashed all his stumps out of the ground in disgust. No, of course, he didn’t: he walked off without a protest or stare at the umpire, accepting his decision exemplarily.
In Woakes’s absence over the last year and more, England’s tail could be described as dodgy at best: when Broad has been at number eight, it has been very hit and miss or, rather, slog and miss. With Woakes back at eight – and Joe Root doing the spin at Edgbaston instead of Jack Leach – babies in England, at any rate, will be able to sleep more soundly.
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