IPL 2018: Not playing the IPL to gauge Virat Kohli's batting, says Chris Woakes

Chris Woakes has been playing for RCB under Virat Kohli's captaincy.

pic credit IANS

It is interesting, the Indian Premier League still, despite all the importance it has deserved, revolves around the international cricket. The Indian team has a full tour of England coming up after the IPL and so, there is a feeling that the English players playing around the Indian ones in the league will get an insight into their counterparts' games before the much-anticipated series. 

Chris Woakes, the Royal Challengers Bangalore fast bowler, though, has cleared that's not the case with him as he gets to play alongside and under the leadership of Virat Kohli. 

They are likely to be up against each other when the series starts in July but Woakes recently clearly stated, “I am not here to spy on Virat’s weaknesses But sharing the dressing room with him has been a great experience. “We expect some good challenges against him back in England. It is great he is going to play for Surrey, it will not only make the competition stronger, playing against world class players is only good for the County game.”

Talking about the poor ongoing IPL season for his team, Woakes said, “We’d liked to have done better, but in certain games, we haven’t been quite 100 percent. In a world class competition like IPL, you need to be 100 percent every time, 80 or 90 percent is not going to be quite good enough. Unfortunately, that is the position we find ourselves in. We still played some really good cricket in patches; we’d like to put in some more complete performances and hopefully, we can start that tomorrow.”

His teammate for England, Ben Stokes hasn't had a good season for Rajasthan Royals this year. Woakes talked this and said, “Ben Stokes is a world class player ... I will never write him off; he still has four games left, and more if they qualify. He is a quality player. If you slip off the game against him, he will punish you.”

 
 

By Kashish Chadha - 12 May, 2018

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