In the 56th over of Indian innings, after multiple tries from England previously, the ball was changed, and the replacement ball was not only in a better shape but also had one side properly shiny in comparison to the other.
Chris Woakes got couple of deliveries slightly inward, one was defended and the other outside-off was left alone by Nitish Kumar Reddy. The third delivery was a beauty, that shaped in a long way, with the shiny side of the ball, and Nitish shouldered arms, only to hear his off bail knocked off the stumps. That was Woakes’s second wicket of the innings, after he had taken out KL Rahul.
Later, he would talk about his late father Roger, who had passed away in May this year. “Definitely. He’s always on my mind, that’s for sure,” the 36-year-old said. “There’s moments where I think about him. He loved his cricket, and he’d have loved this week.”
Woakes had inked a tattoo in his father’s memory on his left tricep. The tattoo shows his father Roger from behind, wearing a flat cap and walking with his hands behind his back, surrounded by his initials and dates.
You can’t leave those 😅
Chris Woakes clean bowls Nitish Kumar Reddy for 1️⃣
🇮🇳 2️⃣1️⃣1️⃣-5️⃣ pic.twitter.com/GFNlGlTJST
— England Cricket (@englandcricket) July 2, 2025
“I got it in memory of him,” said an emotional Woakes. My Dad always wore a flat cap, and he would walk around the boundary with his hands behind his back, nervously watching me play cricket.”
Edgbaston is Woakes’s home ground, he plays for Warwickshire in county cricket. Asked whether the wickets felt a bit more special on his home ground, the proud Brummie said: “Yeah, I’d say so. Across a career you don’t get that many games at your home venue. This is only my fourth. That’s not a load. At the age I am, they don’t come around too often. It’s a special week and I have a lot of friends and family in the ground. I have a love for Warwickshire that goes deep. It’s all I’ve ever known, my whole professional career has been here. I was here before this stand was here. I’ve seen it change, and there’s a lot of people behind the scenes that support you in the good times and the bad. It’s a special week to play at Edgbaston, it really is.”
Woakes averages 22.6 in England, and he came close to taking wickets on two more occasions in the innings. But both times the umpire Sharfuddoula denied him, and DRS sided with ‘umpires call’. The second one in particular seemed close as Karun Nair had shouldered arms to a nip-backer, not too dissimilar to Nitish Kumar.
