Four years after his last Test, Jofra Archer has been named in England’s squad for the second Test against India that starts from July 2 in Birmingham. The fast bowlers, whose career was stalled by recurrent elbow injuries and stress fractures, made his first-class return for Sussex last week against Durham, where he bowled 18 overs and picked a wicket and told reporters that he “felt all right.”
“I’ve been playing for a year, and bowling for two years, including the build-up, so everything is fine. Now it’s a different challenge, because I know my body can hold up to it. The mental part of the game [will be tough]. Over the next couple of days, I’m going to have to battle a bit with it, but it’s all good. It’s a new challenge, and I’ll keep trucking along,” he would say.
Whether he would be an automatic choice in the eleven that faces India is a different questions after England’s seamer rallied back after a torrid first day in Leeds on a surface that hardly offered them any assistance. Some of pundits like Michael Vaughan opined that he should not be rushed back into the eleven, even though that would bolster England’s firepower. Apart from Josh Tongue, intermittently, none had nudged 140kph and when the surface was flat, they missed the sheer pace of someone like Archer and Mark Wood, who is likely to feature in the fifth Test.
England Men’s Test Squad:
Ben Stokes (Durham) – Captain, Jofra Archer (Sussex), Shoaib Bashir (Somerset), Jacob Bethell (Warwickshire), Harry Brook (Yorkshire), Brydon Carse (Durham), Sam Cook (Essex), Zak Crawley (Kent), Ben Duckett (Nottinghamshire), Jamie Overton (Surrey), Ollie Pope (Surrey), Joe Root (Yorkshire), Jamie Smith (Surrey), Josh Tongue (Nottinghamshire) and Chris Woakes (Warwickshire).
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