Tuesday 23 August 2016 19:45, UK
In his first column, England's Chris Woakes talks T20 Finals Day, the forthcoming ODI series with Pakistan and Mark Wood’s "serious pace"...
Coming into the summer, I did not really know where I was going to be after the tour of South Africa. It went OK apart from the Test side of things and it didn't feel like I would be coming straight back into the side and playing much cricket for England.
But I got the opportunity to play - unfortunately, due to Ben Stokes' injury - and at the time I was in good form for Warwickshire and playing some good cricket.
It was then just a matter of taking each game as it comes and it has gone pretty well. I am in a position where I want to finish the summer really well. We have five really important one-day matches against what will be a strong Pakistan team and I'm really looking forward to the series.
Pakistan have just gone top of the ICC Test rankings and played some good cricket this summer - as did we - and the way they played at The Oval, where they outplayed us, they deserved the 2-2 draw in the end.
Of course, we want to get to No 1 but there are a few things we need to improve on, we were not perfect in the Test series by any means. We are not the finished article and we have got a lot of hard work to do before we can be classed as the No 1 team in the world.
Something that Cooky [Alastair Cook] mentioned was that if we had beaten them at The Oval and gone to world No 1, it would have been a bit premature because we still feel that we have got plenty of improvements to make when the Test side gets back together.
Since the end of the Test series, I've been back at Warwickshire and played in our Royal London One-Day Cup quarter-final. I didn't have a standout performance unfortunately, but I thoroughly enjoyed the game and the important thing was that the team won - we got the job done against a pretty good one-day unit in Essex and we move on to the semi-final against a tough Somerset team.
I don't know if I'm going to be able to play in the semi-final, but if the opportunity arises where England are happy for me to play and it's not going to be too much with a busy schedule over the next couple of weeks then I would love to play.
It would have been nice to go back to Warwickshire and put in a really strong performance, but that isn't always the case and it was good to get a one-day game under my belt leading into the ODI series.
It was T20 Blast Finals Day on Saturday and the first time I had done any media work for a full day - as a job, I guess - and I had a really good day. I've done the occasional 10 minutes here or there before but it was a bit different. It was good to be on the other side of the fence although it would have been great to be at Finals Day with Birmingham Bears.
It is always a great day out at Edgbaston, they put on a good show and the crowd get behind all the teams. The cricket lived up to expectations, too, and I thought they were three really good games of cricket.
There were a few real standout performances: Andre Russell did what he has done for many teams around the world, he's a great T20 player - with bat and ball - and he showed how explosive he can be.
Everyone enjoyed Ben Duckett's 80-odd in the first game as well and it was great to see a young guy, who has had a great summer, doing it on the big stage. Hopefully for him, there are more honours to come in the future.
Then, obviously, there was Mark Wood - a team-mate of mine in this one-day series and it's great for us to have him back, fully fit and bowling really quick. It was great to watch him bowl some serious pace and get people jumping around.
Another England bowler involved was David Willey and he took what looked like a really painful blow to his hand. It looked nasty at the time - Dave is a tough character, he doesn't really show any sort of pain even when he is in agony - so to hear that it might not be as bad as first thought is great news for him and for us.
Fingers crossed he recovers quickly and we get him back as soon as possible because he's been an integral part of this team for the last 12 months or so.
Next up are the ODIs and it was a great tour for us in the UAE last autumn, beating them in the one-day and T20 series. It was a great performance by all the lads, especially in their current home conditions. We went 1-0 down and the way we responded to win 3-1 was fantastic. We should take some confidence from that but we know that they'll be looking for some sort of revenge.
If we perform to our best and put in some really strong performances then hopefully we will come out on top. We know that it is going to be hard work and their ranking at the moment doesn't show just how good they actually are in one-day cricket. They always provide a tough challenge and we've got to stand up to that.
From a personal point of view ,I just want to carry on playing for England. Hopefully I can get myself into the XI and stay there and, obviously, as a team the number one thing for us is to try and win the series. We have got a global tournament here next summer and the best way to breed confidence and good team spirit is by winning games of cricket.
We don't play any more one-day cricket in these conditions until next year so this is an important series. We want to win it to get that confidence and momentum going forward.
Watch England take on Pakistan in the first ODI live on Sky Sports Mix and Sky Sports 2 from 1.30pm on Wednesday.
