'England chasing history after backing themselves into a corner'
The home side can point to their depleted stock of fast bowlers. Mark Wood and Olly Stone have missed the entire Test summer, young back-ups like Josh Hull and Sonny Baker have had stop-start seasons.Brydon Carse and Jofra Archer endured the bowlers' graveyard in the fourth Test at Old Trafford. Hindsight is glorious and, a week on, suggests it would have been wiser to save one of them for The Oval. England were going for the win that would have sealed the series and did not get it. Had they caught Ravindra Jadeja on the final day, it may have been a different story. Drops have become a recurring theme.Of all the pacers England could have asked to play all five Tests against India, the task was given to Chris Woakes, the oldest man in the squad. It would have been impossible to legislate for Woakes' shoulder injury, but there is also a question of whether a Brendon McCullum non-negotiable of chasing every lost cause to the boundary should apply to a weary 36-year-old fast bowler.It left Gus Atkinson, Josh Tongue and Jamie Overton to shoulder the burden. Neither of the trio shirked their responsibility, delivering a lion-hearted effort on Saturday in particular.Atkinson's 48.4 overs in the match and Tongue's 46 are each man's most in first-class cricket, Overton's 38 his most for three years.Atkinson looked back to the bowler that took Test cricket by storm last year. His performance belied any worries about a lack of cricket for the previous two months and suggests he perhaps could have played at Old Trafford. He should take the new ball for the first Ashes Test in Perth.Tongue has had a bizarre game. Graham Gooch once said that playing New Zealand with the great Richard Hadlee in the team was like "facing World XI at one end and Ilford 2nd XI at the other". In the first innings at The Oval, Tongue was that in one bowler. He improved in the second and deserved his five-wicket haul, ending as England's leading wicket-taker in the series, despite only playing three Tests.
Between them, Atkinson and Tongue shared 16 wickets in the fifth Test. Overton was unlucky to have three catches dropped, but did little to disprove pre-match the suspicion he was an odd pick.Even if the Surrey man could not have given any more, England did not need his hit-the-deck style in conditions that called for a full length. His recent history, two first-class wickets in four matches across almost two years, did not suggest he was coming in with great pedigree.Over the course of this summer, Overton has gone ahead of Matthew Potts and Sam Cook in the pecking order, albeit if the comparison is slightly clumsy because of their different attributes. One wonders how both Potts and Cook might have gone here. England did not see the pitch until the day before the game, by which time they were dealing with the fallout from Stokes' injury.Potts is centrally contracted. In the winter he played Tests against Pakistan in Multan and New Zealand in Hamilton, then disappeared. The whisper is that England have decided he is not pacey enough to be a battering ram, nor has the skills to thrive with the new ball.Cook, so prolific in county cricket, was disappointing on Test debut against Zimbabwe in May, taking one wicket in his 31 overs. If that was his only chance to impress, he chose a bad time to have a bad game. It would be harsh if England have judged him on that alone.If England have indeed gone cool on Potts and Cook, who else could they have turned to? Ollie Robinson is blacklisted and injured anyway. Calling up Dan Worrall would have sent Australia into meltdown. A 43-year-old retired James Anderson? Perhaps Overton was the best of limited options.
The managing of resources is a lesson for an Ashes series from November that will be just as relentless as this one.England have to get their bowlers to Perth, then nurse them around Australia. Woakes is a serious doubt, Stokes is battling to be fit and Wood has had a setback in his recovery from knee surgery. England will be keeping everything crossed that Archer, Carse, Atkinson and Tongue can get through the next three months of white-ball cricket - both in this country and New Zealand in October - unscathed.Once in Australia, England will have to balance the desire for a good start against the need to stay the course. The final three Tests are back-to-back.There have been other Ashes pointers this week. Bar Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley, England's batters struggled against the movement they can expect to face down under.Joe Root was rattled by words from Prasidh Krishna, yet will surely have to endure worse from the Australians. David Warner fired shots for his old team-mates on Saturday, following chirp from Steve Smith and Nathan Lyon.England will not win in Australia if they do not take their catches, so the six drops in the second innings of the fifth Test is a huge concern. One of them, by sub fielder Liam Dawson, is the sort of thing that will count against his chances of going as the second spinner. Jamie Smith looked tired behind the stumps after his first five-Test series as a keeper. Another in the heat of Australia awaits.Before then, England's supreme run-chasers face the challenge of pulling off their greatest pursuit.They will head to Australia on the back of a stunning victory, or with the regret of a missed opportunity for a series win.
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Woakes recalls: 'It is a horrible feeling, your shoulder not where it should be and worrying it might never get back in. It felt like three hours but the medical staff were amazing. 'I had this vape pen thing which tasted rank but took the edge off, pain-wise. First we tried me lying flat on my front on the bench and letting the arm hang down to do it. But the pain was too much to get into position. 'In the end it was just a case of lying on my back and Anita gradually straightening my arm and trying that way. We thought we had it in with a 'clunk' but then my pectoral muscle spasmed and rejected it. That was horrendous. Another 10 minutes or so, with her knee in my armpit, there was another 'clunk' and it was back it properly. It hurt but there was such a feeling of relief with it, too.' Woakes went to A&E at St George's hospital in Tooting that evening for an X-ray to confirm there was no break, before returning to his wife, Amie, and their two young children at the team hotel. Needless to say, going to sleep that night was close to impossible but he reported back at the Oval the following morning. It was during England's first innings that day, at four wickets down, when Woakes first approached Brendon McCullum to say he would be prepared to go out to bat if called upon. 'No chance, boss,' came the reply from the head coach. 'Park up and we'll see where we get to later in the match.' Set a huge target in the fourth innings, it was clear Woakes might well be called upon and so preparation to bat one-handed began on day four in the indoor school with Marcus Trescothick, the assistant coach. The first instinct was to attempt an orthodox stance, both hands on the bat, and see how it felt. The answer? Not good. 'I defended one normally and, oh mate, it was agony. So yeah, we soon worked out that a left‑hander's stance would shield the shoulder and at least allow me to sort of block with my top hand in control. I hit a few, missed a few, but it felt like the only way to survive.' Sign up to The Spin Subscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers' thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week's action after newsletter promotion And so at 11.40am on Monday, Woakes walked out to the middle wearing Jacob Bethell's left‑hander's thigh guard and, in the absence of an oversized arm guard, a couple of smaller ones borrowed from Joe Root and Ollie Pope. He was helped into his whites by Davies, while Ben Stokes strapped on his pads for him. Typical of the man, Woakes says he worried about being a 'pain in the arse' here. 'It was bittersweet in the end,' he says of the fact that he did not face a ball. 'Part of me wondered what it might be like, to see if I could have defended the ball, seen out an over maybe, squeezed a run or carved a four. 'But the other side of it was: 'Thank God I didn't face a 90mph bouncer, one-handed, facing the wrong way around.' And I knew I was going to have to wear a few bouncers if I did get on strike. Those were the anxious feelings, really. You're still pretty exposed out there.' Like Stokes bowling toe‑hunting yorkers to Pant at Old Trafford, despite the India wicketkeeper having a broken foot, any short balls aimed at Woakes would have been fair game – the brutal, uncompromising side of a sport that, bar concussion, does not do substitutions. Stokes himself has said he does not think a rule permitting them should come in. While the series was a powder keg, with running verbals throughout, the scenes at the end showed the respect underpinning it all. Shubman Gill, India's captain, made a point of stopping to commend Woakes after the match, as did pretty much his entire team. Pant, whose foot had been broken by Woakes during the fourth Test, was back in India but the pair have since swapped messages. 'Shubman said something like: 'That was incredibly brave,'' Woakes says. 'I told him: 'You've had an unbelievable series, well played, and credit to your team.' Both sets of players had been through the mill in the series and deserve credit for the show we put on. Both teams wanted the win, of course, but it does kind of feel fair that it was drawn. 'I saw Rishabh [Pant] had put an image of me on Instagram with a salute emoji, so I replied thanking him: 'Appreciate the love and hope the foot is OK,' etc. He then sent me a voice note saying: 'I hope all is OK, good luck with the recovery and I hope we meet again out there some day.' I obviously said sorry for the broken foot.' The time since has been a whirlwind of emotions for Woakes and, with him seeing a specialist this week and a full prognosis to follow, any questions about what lies ahead would be wrong. There are a couple of final queries, though: first, having gone through this ordeal, does he think Test cricket should have substitutions? Woakes replies: 'I'm with Stokesy, to be honest. Having played for 18 years, the game is what it is: you lose a player and as a team you have to find a way. It makes you more resilient and the team stronger. I do understand why people might think it's needed for freak injuries like mine but there would be too many grey areas or loopholes.' And being hailed as a hero? 'I mean, it's not the way you want to be front-page news – you'd sooner it was for five wickets or a century. There have been a lot of ups and downs since but yeah, the love from the public has helped. 'It is so weird to go from the start of a Test week, thinking 'one last push', to ending up on a physio's table wondering what the future holds.' Whatever that is – whether that was indeed one last act of selflessness in an England career that has been built on it – the world will be wishing him well.
