Chris Woakes

Let's hear from another England bowling colleague of Jimmy.

Chris Woakes has been chatting to Adrian Charles today over on Five Live.

I think Jimmy would still be playing for England if he could, which is incredible.

As I said, the longevity he's had in the game is second to none.

Um, he's, he's high 70s, and for all that England clearly have changed their approach a little bit, if you actually think about the balance of their attack this summer versus last summer, it's not changed that much.

You've effectively had Robinson slotting in for Woakes as the sort of skilled new ball bowler, and then people who can hit 140Ks around him.

And, you know, previously it was Stokes was one of those three, but, um, this summer Archer, Atkinson, and Tung.

So there's not an obvious spot for a, a change bowler, I suppose, which Hill has been for Yorkshire to, to...

And I'm Simon Mann.

And our special guest today is Chris Woakes, who is the World Cup winner and triple championship winner and one of only eight men who's on the Lord's honors board with both bat and ball.

And generally he's the Wizard, which is of course the name of his book which is out this week, The Wizard.

Welcome, Wizard, or Wiz for short.

Yeah

...

Chris Woakes, he plays for England, he goes there and gets on with it kind of thing.

Yeah.

Think of the players that have moved on since then.

You know, Anderson, Broad, Woakes, Wood, Moeen Ali, Jonny Bairstow, Ben Stokes himself.

So there was always gonna be a period, particularly for the test team, where the age profile demanded that it regenerated, and we are going through that regeneration right now.

Um, we've seen it a little bit this summer with, with the pace attack, where the hand was forced a little bit by the retirement of Ben Stokes.

So he got hit when he was batting, and then he didn't field later, hopefully precautionary.

But I'll, I'll note that while he was batting, it was, it, it reminded me of the thing at Lord's where, you know, he got hit and then came out and, and started trying to destroy Chris Woakes all around the ground.

It's like there's a button that gets hit sometimes when Smith gets the cage rattled, where he goes, "All right, I've just gotta hit as many boundaries as possible." Um, smashed three fours off Nortje, uh, and then belted Harmer for six down the ground over long on, and then tried to belt him again, and eventually got held by Marco Jansen.

So is there any word on how things stand with Smith at the moment?

But, um, you know, the, the strength thing, if you looked at some of the sides that are up there, the Somerset's, the Nottinghamshire's, the Warwickshire's, who obviously went on and, and won it.

You know, they've got X. I know Kent have got Zak playing for them but, you know, your bowlers especially, Chris Woakes playing for Warwickshire and, you know, they've got some, you know, when Ton comes back and plays for, for Notts.

You know, they've got some decent players around.

Notts have made a very good signing in John Simpson from Sussex.

And Warwickshire, great to see them win the county championship after, what? Uh, 2021, the last one.

Third time they've won it.

Chris Woakes, another old, an old hand coming back, like Jimmy for Lancashire and, uh, you know, Stokes and whatever-

He's-

So they've got quite an impressive offering at, at primary school level here, the ECB, and what they do with young kids.

But kind of there's a bit of a gap in the market for state school secondary students, so they're trying to provide teachers with the tools to be able to turn to, as I said today at one point, when they go to the storeroom, instead of picking up a football, pick up a cricket bat and some stumps and a ball and they've got various modified versions of softball cricket, which I played a version of in here today with Chris Woakes, which is quite good fun.

That, that was a, a reminder that we spend a lot of time focusing on elite cricket and pathways and all the rest of it.

But participation, which they've had a huge year here in England, there's some remarkable stat, like more than a quarter of a million fixtures were played here this season, which is record-breaking.