For half of his first day living out the International Cricket Captain video game he will no doubt have played in his youth, Ollie Pope was forced to do little more than hit ‘simulate innings’, sit back and watch the magic unfold.
Things got a little trickier into the afternoon sessions, when half-centuries from Dhananjaya de Silva and Milan Rathnayake led a Sri Lankan fightback and gloomy conditions left England’s stand-in skipper restricted to bowling spin from both ends.
Still, having lost the toss, turfing out the opposition for 236 and reaching the close no wickets down and 22 on the board marked a decent first day in the post.
For that flying start, England’s 82nd and freshest Test captain owed much to Chris Woakes, whose double-wicket maiden removed opener Nishan Madushka and regular English scourge Angelo Mathews to leave the tourists in tatters at six for three with the series half-an-hour old.
Later, he added the scalp of Kamindu Mendis to take his tally since finally replacing the retiring James Anderson as attack leader this summer to 13 wickets in five innings at an average of just 17.46.
Even beyond coming so late to a role for which he had been pencilled for a decade, Woakes is in a curious position in an evolving England side.
At 35, he is a man suddenly in the minority as an old head among a younger generation that, even prior to Pope’s temporary promotion, has been taking increasing ownership of this team.
Go back even 12 months, and it still belonged to a different group. Woakes, for instance, was just the seventh-most capped player in the line-up that faced Australia in Old Trafford’s last Test; of the XI in action on the same ground this week, only Joe Root has played more.
With Anderson, Stuart Broad and Mooen Ali retired, Jonny Bairstow dropped and Ben Stokes (as well as the younger Zak Crawley) injured, more than 650 caps’ worth of experience has slipped away, 500 of them (probably) never to return.
Which is why the question of whether Woakes ought to tour Pakistan and New Zealand this winter does not draw quite as straightforward an answer as the numbers would lay out.
Make no bones about it, they are stark. In home Tests, as of this morning, the seamer had taken 127 wickets at a freakish average of 21.57. Overseas, the latter figure leaps north of 51.
Woakes confirmed he is available for both away series this winter, performing a U-turn of sorts. He had never quite gone as far as declaring himself a home specialist, but appeared to have accepted as much when claiming he was “at ease” with being dropped for last winter’s trip to India, despite a player-of-the-series Ashes show.
The Warwickshire seamer has not played a single away Test under Stokes and Brendon McCullum, his last coming in the Caribbean in March 2022, and given all the talk of Ashes forward-planning this summer, now would seem a strange time to reverse. To hear him suggest that said absence might actually be beneficial was to note a man unwearied for a while by the grim toil of days in foreign dirt.
Consider, though, what the seam options in a Woakes-less squad might look like and it is clear that without him, England’s attack would go to Pakistan in October incredibly raw.
Anderson and Broad are out of the picture, as seemingly is Ollie Robinson, so good in Rawalpindi, Multan and Karachi only two years ago. It is too soon for the fit-again Jofra Archer and Saqib Mahmood. Gus Atkinson and Mark Wood will tour, but the latter, in particular, needs managing. Then it is into the novices, the injured and the unknown. Matthew Potts is playing his first Test in a year right now, Olly Stone is on the bench and has not featured for three years, Brydon Carse only returns from a betting ban next week, Josh Tongue is sidelined again and Dillon Pennington, Sam Cook and Josh Hull are all uncapped. Even if Stokes is fit to bat and captain after his hamstring tear, will he be ready to bowl?
“I’m certainly not going to turn down a tour if selected,” Woakes said — and through that lens it is hard to think he won’t be.
