Woakes back on Ashes trail
THE RETURN of Chris Woakes allows Joe Root to slot another piece of his Ashes jigsaw into place at Headingley over the next five days – assuming West Indies can make it past the weekend.
But the picture elsewhere in the side has yet to emerge clearly and the England captain admitted, with just two Tests left before the Gabba, he will issue a challenge this morning to three others to help him fill the gaps.
Tom Westley and Dawid Malan have half-centuries to their name and might have what it takes to succeed at this level but they have not yet made watertight cases, while Mark Stoneman received the best delivery bowled by either side at Edgbaston.
Root’s advice to the trio will be encouraging, but stark. “The only message for those guys is to go out there and take this opportunity,” he said yesterday.
“It’s another week of hard Test cricket, where of course guys are under different pressures wherever they bat in the order. If they want to nail down those spots they have to deal with that and if they get in, make it really count.”
After the debacle of the West Indies performance at Edgbaston where they were beaten by an innings and 209 runs inside three days, the intrinsic value of the runs on offer in this series is questionable.
However, with little else to go on before Australia, Root is at least making the best of it, REPORTS shrewdly creating a make-orbreak mindset in his ‘possibles’ at a venue where England have won only two of their last seven matches.
West Indies were hapless in Birmingham and will get little inspiration from the last two trips here, which saw them lose by an innings and 283 runs in 2007 and an innings and 39, shelled out for 61 in the second dig, in 2000.
“They’ll come back and come out hard at us,” said Root. “No one likes being beaten badly and they’ll want to make sure they prove a point.”
Woakes has been missed since pulling a muscle in his side against Bangladesh in the Champions Trophy in June for all that the man who he replaces here, Toby Roland-Jones, has done good work – enough to see him on to the plane bound for Australia in October.
Root told him yesterday and admitted the Middlesex man was “disappointed” to miss out after
PROBABLE TEAMS Cook, Stoneman, Westley, Root (capt), Malan, Stokes, Bairstow (wkt), Moeen, Woakes, Broad, Anderson
ENGLAND: WEST INDIES: Brathwaite, Powell, K Hope, S Hope, Chase, Blackwood, Dowrich (wkt), Holder, Roach, Cummins, Gabriel UMPIRES: C Gaffaney & S Ravi TV UMPIRE: M Erasmus START: 11am TV: Sky Sports 2, 10am 14 wickets at Tests to date.
Yet with due respect to RolandJones, below, (and Mark Wood and Jake Ball) a fully fit Woakes looks inked in for Brisbane after his heroic 2016, a summer in which he took 26 wickets against Pakistan.
“Woakesy has been phenomenal for us,” said Root. “His record last year for us was outstanding. The challenge for him will be to back that up but it is great to see guys coming into the side taking opportunities, giving the selectors headaches and having to make difficult decisions like this.” Root stands on the brink of his second series win as captain, his first visit as skipper to his home ground at Leeds and is one raised bat away from equalling AB de Villiers’ Test record of half-centuries in 12 consecutive matches. Jimmy Anderson will also be eyeing milestones ahead of Australia, with just eight more victims needed to reach 500 wickets.
West Indies captain Jason Holder believes England’s leading wicket-taker will find things a little more difficult than he did at Edgbaston, where he eased another five notches up the list despite sending down just 22 overs.
“We can’t control what people have said about us or think about us – we’ve just got to control the cricket, take ownership individually and collectively,” he said. “We’ve got to stay together as a side. My job is to keep motivating the team. It is hard, but it’s not impossible.” 19.35 in his three