He has returned to the Test side stronger, quicker and smarter – now he needs the results to prove it
George Dobell in Durban27-Dec-2015Imagine you are Chris Woakes.Imagine you have broken into the Warwickshire team as a teenager and that, before you are 20, you have established yourself as the club’s best bowler. Your mastery of swing has become, on county pitches and against county batsmen, a potent weapon.But you want to play international cricket. And you know that, to do that, you will have to add some pace to your bowling.So you take to the gym. You go the gym every day. Sometimes you go twice. Over three or four years, you change your body shape.Meanwhile, you modify your action to ensure you make better use of your front arm. You spend hours, weeks, months talking to biomechanists and coaches. You watch footage of quick bowlers and note characteristics in common. You learn about lengthening your stride and delaying your action.You pay your dues, too. With Tim Bresnan filling the allrounder role with England, you play more Lions (or equivalent) cricket than anyone and you spend so much time running drinks on to the pitch for the senior team you wonder if you have qualified as a waiter.People start to notice that you are hitting the bat harder. That the speed gun is starting to register some impressive speeds. “Must be calibrated wrong,” the couch potato mutters as he sips his beer. “Woakes is medium pace.” But the batsmen have noticed. You’re hitting the splice; you’ve a decent bouncer. The keeper is standing three yards further back. Your fellow pros, noticing your improved batting and added pace, start to suggest you may be the most valuable player in the county game.But there’s a problem. Because somewhere along the way, you have sacrificed some of your natural weapons for the extra pace you needed. You have lost a bit of that swing that made you special.So you go back to basics. You work on your wrist position. You re-teach yourself the skills that once came so naturally.Except now you have played international cricket. Now you know that tricks that work for county batsmen – set them up with three outswingers; pin them with an inswinger – rarely work against the best. They see it coming. They’re waiting.So you learn wobble seam and reverse swing. You pick the brain of James Anderson. You finally win another opportunity in the Test team and, though the wickets don’t come, you impress your colleagues. You beat the bat and play your part in the defeat of India. By the end of the summer of 2014, you are a first choice selection in the Test team.Then come the injuries. You suffer a stress fracture in your foot which gives Chris Jordan a chance to take your spot in the Caribbean. You hurt your knee in training and have to watch on as Ben Stokes cements his position as England’s best allrounder. You’ve missed out on the Ashes. You suffer a quad injury that rules you out of the Test squad for the tour of the UAE.But you impress in the limited-overs series. While others allow their frustration to show at net sessions, you do the hard work. You bowl at the guys in the first team. You keep a smile on your face and your mouth shut whatever happens. Whatever the setbacks, disappointments or triumphs.You celebrate your inclusion in the Test squad to tour South Africa. With Steven Finn not initially selected, it looks as though you will play. You’re left out of the team for the final warm-up game safe in the knowledge that you have impressed sufficiently in your brief opportunity to know you have given yourself a great chance to play.But then Finn proves his fitness and it seems you are destined to be 12th man once more. Only for Anderson to suffer a minor injury and offer you a late reprieve: you know you may have one Test to prove yourself. The pressure is on.But all you ever wanted is a chance and now you have one. Almost immediately you bowl the equal quickest delivery of the match: 91.9mph. That’s right: you’re bowling quicker than Dale Steyn. Your average delivery is quicker than his, too. It’s quicker than anyone else in the match. That fitness work hasn’t been wasted.”Speed gun is broken,” the couch-potato grunts.The pitch is flatter now. It’s baked in the sun and the tacky quality that allowed the South African attack to gain some seam and spin on day one is almost absent.But you have the new ball. And, inviting the drive from Hashim Amla, the delivery pitches, shapes away and takes the edge of one of the best batsmen in the world… and you see your wicketkeeper put down the chance.All the hard work. Almost a decade in the game. You’ve done everything right. And you end the day with no wickets to your name and a first-ball duck in the morning.You let out a ferocious kick at the moment the ball goes to ground. But then you settle back to your work. You bowl tidily. You don’t complain. You know that the very best make it despite the setbacks. The very best create more chances. The very best find a way. Besides, you know what it’s like to drop a catch. You missed Aaron Finch at the start of the World Cup campaign. He went on to score a century.In the grand scheme of things, it was probably an incident that amounts to little. Amla fell a few minutes later; Jonny Bairstow holding on to a simpler chance to reward Stuart Broad for an excellent spell.But for Woakes the moment is significant. For Woakes it could even be career defining. Anderson is likely to be fit for the Cape Town Test. Someone will have to make way for him. Woakes’ bowling average – 55 and rising – doesn’t make the strongest case for his inclusion.There is a wider significance, too. This keeping error was not a one-off. England’s policy of selecting keepers primarily on the basis of their batting ability has led to a ridiculous situation where the team has not taken a wicket through a stumping in Test cricket since 2012. It has led to a situation where Moeen Ali – like Woakes, a man whose abilities are stretched to their limit by the standards demanded of Test cricket – has suffered far more than his share of lost wickets. At one stage earlier this year, he saw three chances missed off his bowling within about 10 minutes.This piece could have had started “Imagine you are James Foster or Chris Read.” It could have detailed the hard work they have put into their craft. It could have included Jack Russell’s observation that Foster has taken the art of wicketkeeping to a new level. That he might be the best there has ever been.And it could have reflected on a lost art and a dying trade. “Wicketkeepers have to be able to bat,” we’re told. But they need to be able to catch, too. And the balance may well have veered too far in favour of the batting.”Told you: Woakes was nothing more than a medium-pacer,” says the couch potato as he checks the scores the next morning.