The Ashes without Jofra Archer will burn a little less brightly for Australians too

I f you started following cricket recently, you might wonder why the fuss about Jofra Archer missing this year’s Ashes. A player with 13 Tests for England, the last well over two years ago, and 42 wickets averaging 31. Those who watched four years ago will know why Archer is imprinted on an Australian cricket consciousness as firmly as on England’s. His earlier work in Australia’s domestic T20 league had already introduced an incredible athlete in the field and a force with the ball. Then he showed up in the second Ashes match of 2019 in place of the injured James Anderson.

Weeks earlier he had won England a first men’s World Cup, a nerveless yorker from the last ball of a deciding Super Oval keeping Martin Guptill to one run when New Zealand needed two. It deservedly sits atop Archer’s highlight reel. But in the age of T20 proliferation, finding a bowler who can deliver one ball under pressure to end a game is possible. Far more rare is one who can do what he did on Test debut at Lord’s.

In that innings Archer took conventional wickets either side of a spell of rare hostility, at the time the fastest ever recorded by an English bowler, routinely hitting 96mph (154kph). His short-ball barrage was enough to unsettle, and eventually force from the field, a batting great who had just made twin tons in Birmingham and was seemingly cruising to three in a row at Lord’s.

Steve Smith has pushed back more than once, emphasising that Archer never got him out. But he did knock Smith out, out of one and a half Tests in the guts of the series, of which Australia lost one and nearly the other. Before Smith was hit, he was taking on Archer’s short bowling in unusually dramatic style, giving the sense he needed to fight fire with