England look to the futuristic year of 2013 and the flashing blade of Chris Woakes

3 minute read

If your sporting memory stretches this far back, you may remember that James Anderson opted to retire from Test cricket shortly after he was invited to retire from Test cricket by Brendon McCullum, Ben Stokes and Rob Key. Their reasoning was that it was time to look towards “the future”. Apparently looking towards the future now entails picking Chris Woakes to bat in the top seven, just like he did at the start of his Test career, back when we all thought maybe he was a proper ‘all-round all-rounder’, rather than an ‘opening-bowler-who-can-bat-a-bit all-rounder’.

We were wrong about this then. Turns out Chris Woakes is England’s all-rounder. We’re surprised. If we actually had any of the stuff, we’d have put good money on Shoaib Bashir getting dropped and England muddling through with Joe Root and Dan Lawrence as pseudo-all-rounders so that they could retain both six batters and four seamers.

But no. They’ve gone the other way. Matt Potts will replace Ben Stokes. Jamie Smith will get shunted up to number six and Woakes will consequently also get dragged up a slot in his wake.

Is there merit to this?

Woakes in the top seven

The first thing to note is that Woakes’ record in the top seven is more than decent. He averages 55.14 from the 10 Test innings when he’s batted in one those positions. The usual Chris Woakes home-and-away proviso applies though. He averages 5 when batting in the top seven away from home – largely because he’s only done it once.

The long and short of it is really that he hasn’t batted in the top seven very often because his overall Test average is a handy-but-not-top-seven-worthy 27.76. The last time he did so was in 2020.

The series ahead

Some will say England’s shallower batting doesn’t much matter for these next Tests, because “it’s only Sri Lanka”. History suggests this is exactly the sort of thing that gets said before England lose a Test series to Sri Lanka.

But setting that aside, part of Key’s explanation for the decision to respectfully bin Anderson was to give other people opportunities to learn. Does this help achieve that?

“People now need the opportunity to learn how to bowl with that new ball, to go through a day’s worth of Test cricket and then realise they’ve got to back it up the next day. Now’s the time that people have to start learning that,” said Key.

As we observed earlier this summer, Woakes’ home bowling average is now 30 whole runs lower than his away bowling average – 21.83 versus 51.88.

That’s quite a lot and Test coach Brendon McCullum is aware of it. Speaking after the West Indies series, he said Woakes had bowled really well…. “Whether that means he plays overseas, let’s wait and see. But it’s hard to rub him out right now.”

It’s not what you’d call a ringing endorsement.

It sounds to us like that valuable new ball experience is currently going to a bowler who England honestly seem quite ambivalent about and who most likely won’t play overseas. Now he’s the main all-rounder as well? And is this kind of batting line-up – Matt Potts at eight, Gus Atkinson at nine – the kind of thing they’ll be using in overseas Tests?

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe we’re guilty of looking too much to the future ourself. Maybe we should just sit back and enjoy the next Test and Chris Woakes’ batting and bowling performances in it.

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