Chris Woakes returns without the fanfare but still a very big noise | Jonathan Liew

The seamer may not have played for England for a year but his impact in the fourth Test was instant

‘From the Vauxhall End, Chris Woakes.” A ripple of applause. A purposeful, economical run to the crease. An immaculate 85mph delivery on a perfect length, challenging the off-stump, forcing the defensive stroke. Perhaps this is all the fanfare Woakes has ever demanded. Certainly, as he began his 17th crack at Test cricket, he knows not to expect anything more.

It was Woakes’s first delivery in a Test match for more than a year, and yet you wouldn’t have known from watching it whether he had been away for a year or a week. This, in a way, has been his greatest gift and his greatest curse: that sense of reliable timelessness, of comfortable familiarity, of known known. The same qualities that have made Woakes so easy to pick over the years have also made him easy to drop.

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