England star Jofra Archer on injury and his Test future

Jofra Archer is back where it all began. Somewhere along the track that meanders down to the rocky coastline where he occasionally escapes to fish, a dog barks.

The tranquillity broken; rhythmic cracks of balls struck by bats are soon audible as five boys from the Barbados parish of Saint Philip return from a rain break to practise on the adjacent cricket pitch cultivated by Archer’s stepfather Patrick a decade ago.

‘It wasn’t as advanced as it is now. It was literally a mud wicket that we rolled out and if the rain fell there would be no training for at least two days, we’d have to wait for it to dry out. These days that isn’t the case because we’ve got concrete and matting. It’s come a long way,’ Archer tells Sportsmail.

He is motivated and the infectious smile synonymous with the World Cup-winning summer of 2019 is back. This week he has trained alongside his England team-mates, after 10 months apart from them caused by an injured right elbow requiring two sets of surgery. 

It was only at three- quarter pace, but the 26-year-old arcing a delivery past Sam Billings’ outside edge in midweek has been one of the most pleasing sights of this tour.

‘I wasn’t really missing cricket until the guys got here, to be honest,’ he says. ‘But it feels good to be back in the routine. For a while, until I started bowling again, I felt like, “I can’t do this”.

‘But them coming out here has happened at the right time for me. With the Test team coming next month it will allow me to train with higher intensity as well. I couldn’t have written the script. Everything’s happened just for me, I reckon. That’s how it feels.

‘The hardest two pills I’ve had to swallow were not playing in the Twenty20 World Cup and the Ashes but other than that