Chris Woakes is a happy Brummie at present. The all-rounder is not only glowing with form but riding the wave into his first Test match on his home ground of Edgbaston on Wednesday.
It is the venue where, 10 years ago this week, Woakes made his first-class debut for Warwickshire against West Indies A, having by that stage already tasted the Test match experience when, the previous summer, he and his fellow academy players were roped into helping the groundstaff during the epic 2005 Ashes Test.
Now, with the current series against Pakistan locked at 1-1 after England’s 330-run win at Old Trafford last week, Woakes will step out on to this most familiar of turf and look to continue a personal golden run that has returned 26 wickets in four Tests, including 18 at 11 runs apiece in his past two.
“At the minute I’m just trying to bottle up whatever it is that is happening and keep it going,” Woakes says over coffee in Birmingham city centre. “There is a long way to go. I want this to be the start of a long and full career, not simply one summer.”
But what a summer it has been. If Joe Root has been dominating the headlines since his epic double-hundred in Manchester last week, then England’s man of the season to date is Woakes, not simply for the performances, such as his unbeaten 95 in the tied one-dayer against Sri Lanka at Trent Bridge or his match figures of 11 for 102 in the first Test against Pakistan at Lord’s, but the manner in which he confounded so many along the way.
Rewind to the start of the year and the outlook was rather grim. While England were jubilant after a famous Test series win in South Africa, Woakes was reflecting on a rusty one-wicket performance in the dead-rubber defeat at Centurion, one that followed four weeks on tour without match practice and left him, and many others, wondering whether his chance had simply been and gone.
Eight wickets from six Tests at 63 runs apiece since his debut at the end of the 2013 Ashes, albeit in stop-start fashion, did not point to further opportunities. But when Ben Stokes’s knee locked during the first Test with Sri Lanka at Headingley in May – an injury that required surgery – the selectors held their nerve and returned to a player in whom they had invested plenty over the years.
“It was last chance saloon for me, that’s how I saw it,” says the 27-year-old. “I would have been devastated if Centurion had been it. They say timing is everything and, when Ben got injured, I was probably the only all-rounder in county cricket they were willing to take a risk on. Had it been an out-and-out seamer injured, they would probably have looked elsewhere.”
Despite being a popular competitor on the county circuit – and one with statistics that command little but respect – Woakes has needed to develop a thick skin over the course of his career, with those curious souls who use social media as a direct tool for criticism having taken a shine to him in the past; unsurprisingly, the noise seems to have died down of late.
“I have had one or two messages saying they got it wrong but most of them seem to be hiding,” he says with a smile. “But that’s part and parcel of being a professional sportsman. And I don’t check Twitter that much. I did after the Lord’s Test, though. If you’re not going to look then, when are you?”
Where better to continue the resurrection than his home town and at the ground where, during his last championship appearance and on the day of his call-up, he claimed a career‑best nine for 36 against Durham this summer? Woakes, along with Moeen Ali, is one of two sons of Birmingham in the England team, having been born in Sandwell and raised in Great Barr in the city’s north-west.
The Brummie accent, he claims, has mellowed over the years and only returns when in the company of old school friends; not that his England team-mates, who have called him “Wizard” since a darts competition during the 2008 Under-19s World Cup, have noticed. “The lads still give me so much stick for it,” he says, smiling. “Not a day goes past without an ‘owroight Wiz’. But I quite enjoy it.”
Woakes began his club cricket for Aston Manor, following in the footsteps of his two older half-brothers, and despite a preference for football – he was once on the books of Walsall, with a dream of one day playing for his beloved Aston Villa – his talent quickly shone through and, having been accepted into the Warwickshire academy at the second attempt aged 12 , he began following the first team as a supporter.
“My era was Ashley Giles, Dougie Brown [now director of cricket], Jim Troughton – and Ian Bell [now captain] was just coming through, too. I didn’t know them personally but I used to check their scores on Ceefax. Me and a few mates would buy tickets and watch them from time to time, too.”
Making his first-class debut in 2006 aged 16 – “I remember Tino Best was bowling rockets for West Indies A and thinking I would die if I faced him” – a County Championship debut came the following year against Surrey, with Mark Ramprakash, now the England batting coach, chalking up century No95 of his glittering domestic career.
After this tough baptism, the numbers quickly started to stack up for Woakes in championship cricket and, having passed 45 wickets in three successive seasons, he made his England debut during the limited overs leg of their 2010-11 Ashes tour. Though he hit the winning runs in the first Twenty20 in Adelaide and claimed six for 45 in his second one-day international in Brisbane, the call-up said more about England’s approach to one-day cricket.
“At the time I didn’t feel I warranted selection,” he says. “I’d done well in red-ball cricket but I thought I could get found out very quickly in one-day cricket. I just tried to enjoy it. But you wouldn’t get that now, a player being selected to see if they could perform at international level in another format.”
If his international bow showed promise, despite white-ball cricket not being his strongest suit at the time, his Test debut at the end of the home Ashes series in 2013 was chastening, with Woakes batting at No6 to accommodate two spinners in the side, one of whom was Lancashire’s Simon Kerrigan.
“I felt like it went pretty well and, had it not been for bad light, I could have hit the winning runs,” he says. “But Kegs didn’t have the greatest game and I felt I was put into the same bracket – Kerrigan/Woakes – afterwards. I didn’t have an amazing game but I didn’t have a train smash either.”
From there Woakes missed out on selection for the winter Ashes tour with Stokes preferred, and, though there was an encouraging, if unrewarded, Test return during the win over India in 2014, it is only now, having turned himself into a genuine fast bowler and a highly dependable bat with nine first‑class hundreds, that he truly feels part of the set-up.
With Stokes missing once again for this week’s third Test following the calf injury sustained in the last Test, the presence of Woakes and the form he is exhibiting provide comfort for home supporters. Edgbaston now awaits, with the all-rounder understandably buzzing. “I have played two one-dayers and a Twenty20 at Edgbaston but Test cricket has always been the pinnacle for me,” he says. “Pakistan will have a lot of support here too but it will still feel like a home game. And when it’s full, it’s rocking. It’s the best atmosphere in the country.”
