Long-awaited return: Jofra Archer has not featured for England for almost two years
(Picture: Getty Images)Whatever metric you employ to measure the passing of time — days, months, Chancellors, Watford managers — it has been too long.
Since late March 2021, across three formats, five continents and 150-odd days of cricket, 55 different players have worn the colours of England, some only fleetingly, others, at times, incessantly, but none of them called Jofra Archer.
And none quite like him, either. Because for all the box-office brilliance of Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler and Jonny Bairstow, for all the enduring class of James Anderson, Stuart Broad and Joe Root, there was a feeling watching Archer bowl — during the summer of 2019, in particular — an anticipation drawn out by that glide to the crease, that no one, not even 95mph Mark Wood, has quite managed to evoke since.
Perhaps it was the giddy oddness of having this bloke on our side, an intimidatory paceman of the kind more traditionally unleashed upon, rather than by, England. Or perhaps there was just an elongated novelty factor, not enough time to take for granted a bowler who remained England’s shiny new toy right up until the point when he broke, persistent elbow problems restricting and interrupting the seamer’s involvement even before the twin surgeries and stress fracture of the back that forced a blanket 22-month international absence.
If that reads too much like an obituary to the short-lived international career of a prodigious talent, then it ought to be a relief to us all that it is not. On Friday morning, in Bloemfontein, Archer is due to make his return to the England fold in the First ODI against South Africa, just in time for the commencement proper of preparations for the defence of a World Cup he played such a vital hand in winning three-and-a-half years ago.
There has been a comforting, old jumper assurance to watching Archer’s return to action for MI Cape Town in the SA20 this month, something even approaching nostalgia, a quite ridiculous sentiment to hold about a 27-year-old who made his debut fewer than four years ago.
Archer joked on Wednesday that he was glad Buttler, playing for Paarl Royals, was at the non-striker’s end as he bowled what might have been a rusty first over of his comeback in the tournament opener, but six balls and a wicket-maiden later, you suspect the feeling was probably mutual.
Four more T20s since have confirmed things to be broadly as we left them. That cool aura is still intact, so, too, that action, the graceful whirr of legs, arm, wrist and then, suddenly, at north of 90mph, the ball, projectile and projector not quite tallying up, like a thunderous burp emerging from the mouth of a mermaid.
Above all, despite the months of grind it has taken to get back here, it still looks so uniquely effortless: as Johnny B Goode played guitar like he was ringing a bell, Archer bowls rockets like he is flicking peas.
It is clear just how much of a difference a healthy Archer would make to England’s World Cup chances in India in the autumn, but harder than you would imagine to put a finger on quite how much or exactly where they have missed him during his wilderness years.
Maybe the run of one win in 17 Tests that saw off Root and Chris Silverwood would have been fractionally less one-sided, but a brittle batting line-up was that era’s chief flaw, one beyond the remit of a bowler whose Test batting average is eight.
Test skipper Stokes and head coach Brendon McCullum would love to have Archer charging in for this summer’s Ashes, but, on the evidence of the last eight months, a transformed England’s hopes hardly depend on it.
Maybe England would have been double-white-ball champions sooner had Eoin Morgan had the option of turning to Archer as his death bowlers went round the park at the 2021 T20 World Cup. But their coronation was delayed only 12 months, as Buttler’s men found a way to get by: namely, Sam Curran.
Archer admitted that watching those two tournaments had been among the toughest parts of his unfortunate exile. “I was screaming at the TV,” he said. “The hardest part of watching is not being able to help. You don’t even have to play, just being there [helps]. I almost bought a ticket to Australia.”
His dogs, he says, have made the long road back not merely liveable but genuinely enjoyable. “I went a bit crazy probably a month after I got back to Barbados,” he said. “I got about five dogs in the space of four weeks. To be honest, just the routine kept me going — shovelling lots of poo and feeding lots of dogs!”
Keeping Archer going now will require careful management, and it was almost quaint to hear him refer to there being “not much cricket” between now and the Ashes, save, of course these three ODIs, a white-ball tour to Bangladesh, a full two-month IPL season.
The end-game, for England at least, is clear, it being impossible not to hark back and draw parallels with 2019, simultaneously Archer’s breakthrough year and the one in which he became a household name playing a sport that does not produce too many.
