I support you a lot on here but when I see revisionist, hindsight bollocks then i'm going to call it out. You have good cricket knowledge but you are absolutely king of hindsight at times. First of all going into the first test Woakes was our locked in third seamer. No-one whether its Ed Smith, you, any media expert would have said differently. After the first two tests he has series figures of 7 for 170 and again no matter what you say, or any expert says now, not one person was calling for Curran to be into the side going into Headingley. Woakes was shocking at Headingley and for the first time there was an argument for Curran to play and probably would have done had it been anywhere but OT. This was effectively an Australian drop in pitch with no conventional swing although Starc did get it to reverse. It was a pitch where tall, back of the length bowlers had a big advantage. Outside of his new ball spells Broad was ineffective, Overton didnt go for many but was ineffective and Stokes and Archer when it matterd in the first innings were poor. There was nothing to suggest Curran would have made a difference. Even if you disagree, nobody at the time would have picked Curran earlier than then although strangely one or two are now saying otherwise
