England registered a win in the first Test against India, where pace spearhead Chris Woakes played a key role. Currently, he is the senior-most bowler in a transitioning bowling unit following James Anderson and Stuart Broad’s retirement as well.

Speaking ahead of the second Test against India at Edgbaston, Woakes said: “I’ve played a lot of my England games with Jimmy [Anderson] and Broadie [Broad] so it is different. It’s a great opportunity for myself, I’ve enjoyed that role so far and it’s good to pass on a little bit of knowledge to some younger guys that haven’t played as much Test cricket. And also, I’m learning from them. You’re always on that journey of learning every time you go out there so thoroughly enjoying it.”

However, Chris Woakes said that he wouldn’t be playing as long as Anderson did, but he also felt that a big deal was made about age, which he thinks was just a number as well.

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“I don’t think I’ll be playing when I’m 41, particularly for England,” Chris Woakes shared. “Look, I think I’ve tried to get the most out of my career and I’m still in that position where I feel like I’m trying to get better trying to improve every time I go out there, pass on that knowledge. As I said, people like to talk about age a lot but at the same time it is just a number. As long as I’m contributing to the team and feel like I’m performing well then I’ll carry on. If one day that time comes where you get a tap on the shoulder, then so be it but at the minute I’m enjoying it.”

In the first match in Leeds, Team India scored five centuries across the Test. With 1,673 runs scored across the Test by both teams, Woakes added that the flat surface made it a difficult task for the bowlers, but picking up 20 wickets was the difference as well.

“I think we know how good the Indian batters are…they’ve always had great depth waiting, knocking on the doors to come through. Headingley was a pretty good wicket to bat on which made it hard work for the bowlers but obviously we did well in terms of being able to take 20 wickets,” he stated.

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“And when they got ahead of the game with the bat we managed to drag ourselves back into the game which is really important, and a good skill to have but moving forward to here [Birmingham], I’m sure [we are] looking at another good batting surface, there’s good weather around so it might be another hard week for the bowlers but we’ll look at what things that we did well, maybe things that we didn’t do so well, and try and put them right again this week,” he expressed.

However, England successfully chased down 371 in the fourth innings at Headingley, which was their second-highest chase in Test cricket after their chase of 378 against India just three years ago as well. Despite being in tough positions in the Test match, England convincingly chased that as Woakes admitted that the team enjoys their current brand of cricket as well.

“As a player and as a team you always get confidence from doing things well and winning, you can do things well and lose and it doesn’t quite always have that same effect so it’s always good to go over the line and get a win. We’re also a group that we know we need to improve. There’s areas that we did last week that we know we can do better, so yeah, we’ll look at putting those things right,” he shared.

“But certainly, as a team, the way we go about things we you know we’re pretty happy… [with] this kind of style of cricket and the brand of cricket we want to play, we know that that’s been successful over the last few years and we’ll stick to that but there’s definitely still tweaks that we know we can do a bit better as a team so we’ll be looking to do that,” Chris Woakes concluded.