Updated May 23rd, 2020 at 20:58 IST

World Cup-winning English pacer Chris Woakes talks about post-COVID-19 training session

I guess it's a bit of a window, cricket is not generally a contact sport, so that helps, but we'll get more of an inkling when we start practising more as team.

Reported by: Karthik Nair
| Image:self
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English pacer Chris Woakes has revealed that he has got an idea about how the rest of the summer will be after the first training session. All the global sporting events have either been postponed or cancelled due to the global pandemic. Meanwhile, the IPL 2020 that was originally supposed to get underway on March 29 has now been suspended indefinitely due. At the same time, uncertainty looms over the ICC T20 World Cup that is scheduled to be held in Australia in October-November and it has been reported that the event might be held Down Under in 2022.

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'I took everything I needed for training': Chris Woakes

"The venues and counties have tried to make this as safe as possible. In my eyes, they have done a really good job. I knew exactly how I was going to go into the ground. You have to drive your own car -- at the minute there's a lot of testing going on at Edgbaston, with the testing facility so I parked in a safe area at the back, and walked onto the pitch through the Hollies Stand," ESPNCricinfo quoted Woakes as saying.

"I took everything I needed for training with me: bottles, towels, medicine balls, bands that I use for warming up. I was given a box of balls, ready there for me to use once I got into the ground. And then those balls are now mine. No one else will touch them - the whole thing of having one skin on each ball," he added.

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'I guess it's a bit of a window': Woakes

"I guess it's a bit of a window, cricket is not generally a contact sport, so that helps, but we will get more of an inkling when we start practising more as a team and have more people training at a venue. There are no changing rooms involved at the moment, match mode will look a lot different," Woakes said.

"Off the park, it will take up quite a bit of headspace. The world we are living in does take up some headspace. But on the field, you want 100% concentration, whether that is batting or bowling, and cricketers and sportsmen, in general, are quite good at focusing on the job in hand," he added.

(With ANI Inputs)

(Image Courtesy: AP)

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Published May 23rd, 2020 at 20:58 IST