Chris Woakes is targeting the day-night Test against West Indies at Edgbaston for his England return following the nine centimetre tear in his left side that wiped out two months of his summer and had him writhing in pain when sneezing from hay fever.
Woakes, who enjoyed a breakthrough season last year with 34 wicket in six Tests, pulled up lame just two overs into the Champions Trophy at the start of June and makes his first-team return for relegation-theatened Warwickshire on Sunday in a County Championship encounter with Middlesex at Lord’s.
A second-team fixture against Northamptonshire last week was the first time Woakes has bowled since the injury – he claimed two wickets, one in his first over back – and now with the carrot of appearing in the country’s first floodlit Test at his home ground on 17 August, the 28-year-old seamer is ready for the next step on his recovery.
“I feel I’m as close as I can be to full speed now,” Woakes told the Observer. “The prestige and history of the first day-night Test at my home ground means I’m desperate to prove my fitness but I really have to focus on this week. If I can get plenty of overs under my belt then hopefully I’m in the frame for selection. But I can’t say for definite now.
“The recovery time for a side strain is usually six weeks but the scans showed a 9cm tear on my internal oblique muscle. Coughing and sneezing was still hurting three weeks later, which just shows how bad it was, and having hay fever didn’t help me one bit.”
Laughing hurt Woakes too during this early recovery time, although the frustration of missing the Champions Trophy – where much-fancied England suffered a semi-final defeat to the eventual winners Pakistan – meant there was little to smile about. His absence from the Test side has given Toby Roland-Jones the chance to stake a claim, with eight wickets on his debut.
Woakes said: “It’s great for Toby to come in and get wickets and great for English cricket too – it’s important guys do well and give us depth. But injuries are part of being a fast bowler and you’re never going to just walk back into an England side.
“There’s a few nerves about another setback this week but I wouldn’t be on the park if I wasn’t ready to test it out. And I’m desperate to get a first win for Warwickshire this season because in red-ball cricket we haven’t fired yet. With eight teams in Division One it is so tight and a poor start, like we had, can see you in a battle pretty quickly.”
Woakes is not the only England Test hopeful in action as the County Championship briefly returns during the mid-summer Twenty20 block, with Jake Ball set to play for Nottinghamshire against Derbyshire following a knee problem and the opener Haseeb Hameed keen to put pressure on Keaton Jennings’s spot as Lancashire travel to Hampshire.
