From being a player who was staring into the abyss in early 2016 to one of the first names in the team, Chris Woakes's journey from one of English cricket's "nearly man" to "the man" has been meteoric. He made his first-class debut for Warwickshire a few months after his 17th birthday. Woakes made his international debut in 2011 in a T20I against Australia. In the ODI series in the same tour, he finished with the second-best bowling figures by an English player in ODIs. Although he made his Test debut in 2013, it was thought that he lacked the pace to be a starter. Ben Stokes's emergence as a match-winner did not help his case either. However, in 2016, due to injury to Stokes, Woakes received another chance—a chance he took with both hands. In the 2016 home series against Pakistan, Woakes scored the joint highest score by a No.8 in ODIs. It was in the 2018 Test at Lord's that he made his name known - by taking 11 wickets, and became the first since Botham to take five wickets in both innings at the ground. Woakes is the fourth-ranked ODI bowler in the world as of 2021.