England right-arm pacer Chris Woakes on Saturday said that some of the Pakistani players are ‘dangerous’ and do not deserve to be in a team placed at number in the ODI rankings.
“Pakistan played better than us at Cardiff [in the fifth ODI] and deserved that win but we have still beaten a really good international side 4-1 over the series and come out on top pretty convincingly really,” said Woakes. “If we were offered that at the start of the series, I think we’d all have snapped your hand off pretty quickly.”
He added: “Although they [Pakistan] are ninth in the ODI rankings, Pakistan still have some really dangerous players and are better than that ranking.”
The 27-year-old said the team dearly wanted to enforce a whitewash on Pakistan in the ODI series but a 4-1 result is still admirable.
“The one-day series has been fantastic,” he said. “As much as we wanted to win 5-0 and get the whitewash, we shouldn’t take any credit away from ourselves after winning 4-1.”
After drawing the Test series 2-2, Pakistan were outclassed by England as they went 4-0 in the five-ODI series but the visitors came back strong and won the final ODI and the one-off T20I, and Woakes thinks the end was not as good as England had hoped.
“It was unfortunate to finish the way we did with the last two games, the final ODI and the T20I didn’t go as planned but credit to Pakistan, they’re a good team and they’ve come back strong. They ended their tour well and they can take confidence from that,” he said.
Under captain Misbahul Haq in Tests, Pakistan were not being given any chance of beating the hosts on their home turf and the Englishman said that the visitors showed with a 2-2 draw why they are now world number one in the five-day format.
“We drew 2-2 with Pakistan in the Test series but they’re number one in the world and they showed why in any conditions, they’re a great team,” he said. “Overall though, I don’t think we can moan. We’ve had an amazing summer in white-ball cricket, those were the only losses that we’ve had, and we’ve been pretty dominant over the summer in all formats.”
He continued: “I think we can be really happy with our summer and excited looking ahead to the winter and a new challenge in different conditions in Bangladesh and India.”
