England seamer Chris Woakes will play no further part in the 5th and final Test match of the series, announced the England and Wales Cricket Board on Friday, August 1. The announcement came ahead of Day 2’s play, where the board announced that he was ruled out of the series and further assessment would be made at the end of the Test match.
Woakes, who has bowled the most deliveries in the series so far, copped a nasty blow on his shoulder while fielding on Day 1 of the final Test match at The Oval. The incident occurred on the fifth ball of the 57th over when Karun Nair drove Jamie Overton down the ground. Woakes sprinted to stop the ball, successfully preventing a boundary as Nair ran three, but landed awkwardly and immediately clutched his shoulder before walking off.
Woakes did not take further part in the day’s play.
England seamer Gus Atkinson came to the press conference at the end of Day 1’s play, and had hinted that Woakes was unlikely to part in the rest of the game. This would be a huge blow for the England Test team, as the conditions at The Oval were aligned to Woakes’ style of bowling.
Woakes’ injury will put England in a troublesome position as they are missing four of their main players in the ongoing Test match. Captain Ben Stokes, frontline pacers Jofra Archer and Brydon Carse and spinner Liam Dawson were pulled out of the final game either due to injuries or workload concerns.
England are now left with Gus Atkinson, Josh Tongue, Jamie Overton, part-time spinners Joe Root and Jacob Bethell as their bowling options.
Debate on Injury Replacements
Earlier, at the end of the 4th Test match of the series, when workload concerns had started developing for both teams, a debate . India head coach Gautam Gambhir and England captain Ben Stokes were on polar opposites on the matter. While Gambhir wanted the laws to allow replacements for external injuries, Stokes said that several teams would use loopholes and misuse the law.
“…if there’s an external injury or serious concern, I fully support having a substitute. Especially in a series like this, if someone’s visibly injured, there’s nothing wrong with making a change. In a long series like this, you can’t be forced to play with just ten players,” Gambhir had argued after the 4th Test match in Manchester.
Stokes, however, was not a fan and called out the suggestion.
“I think it’s absolutely ridiculous that there’s a conversation around an injury replacement,” Stokes said. “I think that there would just be too many loopholes for teams to be able to go through. You pick your 11 for a game; injuries are part of the game. I completely understand the concussion replacement: player welfare, [and] player safety. But I think the conversation should just honestly stop around injury replacements because if you stick me in an MRI scanner, I could get someone else in straightaway,” Stokes said in the post-match press conference.
“If you stick anyone else with an MRI scanner, a bowler is going to show, ‘Oh yeah, you’ve got a bit of inflammation around your knee. Oh sweet, we can get another fresh bowler in.’ I just think that conversation should be shut down and stopped,” he had added.