It was a wonderful moment of joy and romance of the game and it couldn't have happened to a nicer person. Chris Woakes has always come across as a very good man and he plays his cricket in that way only.
Woakes completed his boyhood dream of getting a standing ovation at the Home of Cricket by playing his best Test knock so far. His 120* not out on Day 3 at Lord's, has now got him in the special and the rare list of people who are part of the honor's board for their batting as well as the bowling effort.
Woakes had previously taken a 5-fer at Lord's and now even has a hundred there.
Talking about his performance, Woakes said, “That feeling of raising your bat to a standing ovation at Lord’s is a bit of a boyhood dream. But it’s an incredible feeling,” and added, “It’s a sweet day, really. I was over the moon to get the call to be back in the squad and I could never have dreamed of getting a hundred in my comeback Test, To get to a hundred was an incredible feeling and I was getting a bit nervous through the 90s, to be honest. All of a sudden, you start thinking of three-figures, start wafting at things outside off-stump, which I hadn’t been doing. Jonny (Bairstow) came down and had a word, which settled me.”
Woakes even had a "baby celebration" planned for years for this moment.
“The lads did ask me actually where was the baby celebration, but for some reason, that wasn’t really on my mind," he said, "I didn’t really have any ideas of how I was going to celebrate, and didn’t really know how to – but I’m obviously just delighted. It’s still a bit of a blur. It seems to go so fast – 30 seconds of raising your bat feels literally like a blink of the eye,”
“It’s a sweet day. It has been a frustrating summer so far, missing quite a bit of cricket. I was over the moon to get the call to be back in the squad. I could never really have dreamt of scoring a hundred in my comeback Test. With five or six weeks out injured, you’re watching the boys all summer and you want to be out there,” said Woakes who has a stellar batting average of 121 and a bowling average of 9.93 at Lord's and added, “I definitely felt my body was ready (here), and from a mental side of things I was ready to play. Coming in in place of Ben Stokes, it’s quite big shoes to fill. But you try not to think about that – I don’t try to play like him. I play like myself, try to do my job for the team, and thankfully I’ve done that so far,”
(Inputs from Indian Express)
