Writing Chris Woakes’s autobiography in York revealed the resolve behind ‘the nicest man in cricket’
In York on Monday evening I sat down with Chris Woakes to discuss his new autobiography, The Wizard, and heard stories that stretched across his 14-year England career. The event included an audience member who had once taught him and, on stage, Woakes carried just shy of 400 international wickets between past and present performances.
Woakes’s book traces a career that began with a first-class debut in 2006 and progressed from early doubts to two World Cup wins and the Compton-Miller medal as player of the series in the 2023 Ashes. We first properly met in 2016 at Edgbaston, where after an interview he produced a career-best nine for 36 between my first draft and a requested retake, foreshadowing his breakthrough summer. A youthful anecdote recalled by Mr Wager — that Woakes once feigned illness to bunk off school for a weekend in Newquay — missed the cut for the hardback edition.
The idea for the book surfaced around three years ago but stalled because Woakes’s schedule included a three-format career, an Indian Premier League deal, two young children and a central England contract; those factors made it sensible to wait until the red pen of national selection no longer applied. The final morning at the Oval last year, when Woakes walked out to bat as a one-armed No 11, provided the catalyst; through David Luxton we met publishers at Michael Joseph and the project moved forward.
Approaching the work as a first-time ghostwriter required seeking advice and obeying a clear brief: as little of me and as much of him as possible. My tasks were to draw threads from his past, verify memories and shape the prose for him to read and adjust; over roughly three months we met or spoke semi-regularly in cafes, pubs and front rooms and agreed a structure that begins with the Oval before looping back into a semi-chronological, theme-led timeline.
Woakes’s recall proved reliable and his attention to detail matched the process. The book covers changes in the game during his career, noting a shift from county cricket as the bread and butter of a player’s life to an era featuring franchise opportunities, and describes contrasting coaching environments: Andy Flower’s school of hard knocks at the start, Trevor Bayliss’s homespun clarity and Brendon McCullum’s later approach.
The Wizard includes behind-the-scenes accounts of the Covid years, analysis of Woakes’s strong home record versus his difficulties on the road, and a chapter contributed by his wife, Amie, on life away from cricket. The most difficult material to revisit was the loss of his father, Roger, in 2024; returning to that morning produced tears and, for me, a personal echo when I later learned that my father, Bill, had passed away overnight.
Woakes’s off-field kindness extended into the writing process: he secured a small deadline extension, drove down to south Brum to take me for a beer and checked in regularly while I struggled that summer. Moeen Ali described him as the “best teammate you could wish for,” and one of the points Woakes makes in The Wizard is his unease at being labelled “the nicest man in cricket,” a tag he feels can undervalue the drive that made him a competitor.
The Wizard by Chris Woakes is published by Penguin Books, priced at £25; to support the Guardian, copies can be ordered at guardianbookshop.com (delivery charges may apply). This piece is an extract from the Guardian’s weekly cricket email, The Spin; to subscribe, visit the subscription page referenced in the original publication.