Chris Woakes reveals the curfew that killed England's World Cup party
A night of carnage at Lord's
As Eoin Morgan lifted the World Cup to an explosion of fireworks and ticker tape, the sense of achievement finally hit home. Lord's was still packed to the rafters, the party in full flow. Up on the podium, Chris Woakes was glowing with a mix of pride and relief, and crying with laughter, thanks to his old mate Mark Wood.
Wood was standing next to Jason Roy in the lineup and, for some reason, grabbed a fistful of Roy's shirt at the big moment, pulling it up while the players jumped around like lunatics. "Poor bloke," Woakes writes, recalling Roy battling to stop his gut from hanging out at the pinnacle of his career.
Everything was a blur from the moment Jos Buttler wiped out the stumps. Woakes recalls briefly returning to the dressing room before the trophy lift, with a bottle of beer pretty much deleted in seconds, and going back through the pavilion. "It was absolute carnage in there, one of the poshest and most reserved places in world cricket transformed into a bit of a moshpit."
Respect for New Zealand
Woakes praised the New Zealand side, who had lost the final on the boundary count rules and were left with a second successive set of runners-up medals after losing to Australia in 2015. "Genuinely, I'm not sure there's another team in world cricket – ourselves included – who would have been as sound as they were that day." Kane Williamson, he said, offered his congratulations and never put a dampener on the celebrations.
Bayliss and the trophy
Woakes said he had spent four years dreaming of getting his hands on the trophy, and everyone got their chance during a lap of honour. Coach Trevor Bayliss, he writes, wanted nothing to do with it. "Players, he always insisted, were the people who won things. Not the support staff." Wood thrust the trophy into Bayliss's hands, and after a photo was taken, Bayliss casually put it on the ground without breaking stride.
Party until dawn
Jos Buttler had written the lyrics of an adapted Allez Allez Allez on his bat, and the song served as the soundtrack to the night. Masseur Mark Saxby was namechecked, as was captain Eoin Morgan, who after a group photo told the squad: "Let's drink some winners' piss!" The official beer of the tournament, Bira91, was not to Woakes's taste, but plenty was drunk, alongside Veuve Clicquot and cigars. Woakes called it at around 6am, and after two hours' sleep the squad was back on a coach to the Oval for a Chance to Shine event, with about 1,000 schoolchildren, while James Vince was, in Woakes's words, "the greenest man I've ever seen that morning."
Why no open-top bus?
Woakes questions why the ECB did not organise an open-top bus parade through London, as the 2005 Ashes-winning team received. He notes that a record 15 million viewers tuned in to the final across Sky and Channel 4, and argues that football clubs' League Cup celebrations show how supporters line the streets to see their heroes. "So why did the ECB bottle it?" he asks. "We could have done the same, reaching out to thousands more people than we did."