Test series against West Indies wouldn't be easy for us, says Woakes
Mar 07, 2022
St John's [Antigua], March 7 : England pacer Chris Woakes has said that the upcoming series against West Indies would not be an easy one for his side.
England and West Indies will lock horns in three-match Test series. Earlier, James Anderson and Stuart Broad were dropped from the squad.
"Robinson has had a great start to his Test career so naturally he'll be a big miss. At the same time, it gives people opportunities. This tour is not just solely about opportunities, we're trying to win games of cricket, but at the same time it does give that chance to someone to potentially make their Test debut or who's been waiting in the wings for quite a while, and show that they can do it at this level," ESPNcricinfo quoted Woakes as saying.
"By no means is this going to be an easy Test series for us," he said. "We haven't won a lot of Test matches here in the last 50 or 60 years from what I've heard so it's not by any means going to be a walkover," he added.
England Men have named a 12-strong squad ahead of the first Test against the West Indies. The Test begins on Tuesday in Antigua at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium.
"I think it's more of a mindset, really. In Australia, we maybe got into a place where people were thinking more internally, thinking on personal levels rather than thinking fully about the bigger picture and about how to win games of cricket as a team," said Woakes.
"We're trying to focus on that in particular, the last week or so we've tried to focus on how we can get better at doing things as a unit rather than individually. Naturally, it's a game that produces individual performances but we still need to be better as a collective, we can't just rely on certain individuals to always step up and put their hand up. We need to do it as a group and that's something we've tried to focus on in the 10 days we've been here," he added.
England squad: Joe Root (C), Jonny Bairstow, Zak Crawley, Ben Foakes, Dan Lawrence, Jack Leach, Alex Lees, Saqib Mahmood, Craig Overton, Ben Stokes, Chris Woakes, Mark Wood.
