Chris Woakes has his say over the current Bazball crisis saying ‘Would be daft for us to rip it up and start again’.
Despite England’s 4-1 loss to Australia in the just finished Ashes, Chris Woakes thinks it wouldn’t be wise for them to leave Bazball. Woakes, who currently works in the franchise industry, stated that adopting a new strategy would undo a lot of the excellent work completed during the Ben Stokes-Brendan McCullum era.
However, Woakes stated that the team’s inability to win the “key moments” while having a wealth of skill was the most depressing aspect of the Ashes defeat.
“I think it’d be daft to kind of rip it up and start again,” Woakes said in an interview with ESPNcricinfo. “We have done so many good things over the last three years. We won some extremely exciting Test matches. I think people forget that before they took over, we were a pretty poor side. We were not winning games of cricket. I think at the same time now, obviously we’ve had a poor series in Australia and haven’t got quite over the line in the big series, but they’re close. To rip it up now would be a bit daft.
“It didn’t go really well in Australia obviously. I think we had the team to be able to compete. The guys are extremely talented. I think maybe going to Australia for the first time for a lot of them, maybe got exposed a little bit to the conditions. Then you realize that you have to back it up day after day after day. They didn’t win those key moments. I think particularly as a bowling attack, they probably didn’t quite have the experience and the know-how to perform on those surfaces.”
Woakes stated that regardless of how well he recovered from the shoulder injury he suffered in July of last year, his decision to retire would not have altered. He participated in the December ILT20 with the MI Emirates team. He is now in Dhaka to play in the BPL for the Sylhet Titans.
“As soon as I made my statement of retiring, I’d made my decision. I was kind of happy to make that decision, regardless of what happened with regards to injury and recovery. But I recovered probably a little bit quicker than I expected. I expected it to probably cause me a few more issues than what it did. I worked hard on recovery and fitness so to get back was pleasing. Once I made my decision, I was never going to go back on that.”