Snarling Archer delivers pure theatre with game-changing 92mph rockets

Jofra Archer was riled. The obvious demands of T20 cricket have inured fast bowlers a little more to the inventive eccentricities of the batsmen in front of them — indeed, Archer conceded a record 76 from his four overs at the Indian Premier League this year — but the rhythms of Test cricket, whatever Bazball might intend, are different, and flagrant breaches of convention can still irk.

And, as we all know, Rishabh Pant breaks those rules more often than most, and he had just done so yet again, charging down the pitch and hitting Archer through mid-on for four. One-handed. On as sluggish a pitch as we have seen for a good while. And all with a damaged finger that had prevented him from keeping wicket for much of the game.

All things considered, it was pretty outrageous, and it will have concerned England a little. If there was one player who could score quickly and so put England under real pressure on this compelling final day, it was Pant. Ravindra Jadeja was magnificently obdurate and calm in his unbeaten innings, but he was never able to take the game away from England. So just imagine what Pant might have done alongside him.

But now Archer had a plan, and a swift response. Just two balls later he produced an absolute peach of a delivery from round the wicket, the ball holding its line enough to beat the left-hander’s defensive prod and send the off stump cartwheeling. It was some image for the photographers waiting eagerly, and some moment in the game.

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It had been a brave decision from the captain, Ben Stokes, to open the bowling with Archer from the Pavilion End after Brydon Carse had been superb there on Sunday evening. Archer had struggled from the Nursery End when attempting to replicate Jasprit Bumrah’s bounce off a length earlier in the day, bowling far too full, but the Pavilion End is his more natural habitat, as it is for all the great line bowlers, and though he was again too full initially, he was soon hitting the sort of length that defeated Pant.

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And his speed was high too. In the first innings his opening spell had been the third-fastest by an England bowler and here his first salvo was the quickest by an England bowler anywhere in the world in the past ten years.

The ball that did for Pant was measured at 89.6mph, and, when Nitish Kumar Reddy arrived later, his first ball, a bouncer that whistled past his nose, was up at 92mph. Archer also followed through right down to Reddy and offered some words of advice, which was not the first time he had done that on this day of high tension and high stakes.

Archer was in combative mood as he gave both Reddy and Pant a piece of his mind on the final day at Lord’s GETTY

He admitted afterwards that he was not particularly “proud” of screaming at Pant — “I was just telling him to charge that,” he said — but this was a Jofra Archer full of emotion, passion and relief at being back after four long injury-ravaged years. He had some words too for Washington Sundar, whom he dismissed with a stunningly athletic return catch, diving one-handed to his right, as he and Stokes combined to give England a wonderfully incisive and inspirational beginning to the day.

It was pure theatre, and that is what Archer always provides. As Stokes said afterwards, the crowd’s mood alters completely when Archer enters the attack and “the feeling in the game just changes”.

That is what bowlers of such high pace can do. There is always an interesting narrative around Archer, with some concentrating too much on the injuries and what is considered the over-hype, rather than the upsides of what he can bring.

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He can be frustrating, as Stokes demonstrated when screaming at him to show some more energy as he strolled in from long on during Stokes’s unfathomably tiring ten-over afternoon spell. But Stokes knows Archer’s value. He knows that England are a much better side with him in it. He is a game-changer, as the wicket of Pant proved. He is not at his best yet, simply because match fitness for such gruelling matches cannot be found in the nets or the gym, and his wait has been long, but he still took five wickets in the match and bowled 39.2 overs.

Archer warms down at Lord’s after helping England on their way to a stunning victory GARETH COPLEY/GETTY IMAGES

The question is simple: as an opening batsman, would you rather Archer be playing or not? I know my answer, not least because his bouncer to a right-hander is so difficult to avoid. The injuries have understandably taken some toll, because it is noticeable how little Archer moves the ball away from the right-hander now, but the speeds are up, even if he wearily bowled in the low 80mphs at times in the afternoon and evening, and the threat most certainly remains.

The match ended in curious fashion as a ball from the off spinner, Shoaib Bashir, rolled back on to the stumps from Mohammed Siraj’s bat, but just remember what had happened in the previous over: Siraj had been hit on the shoulder by a nasty 88mph bouncer from Archer.

What followed was no coincidence, as it was also no coincidence that England won with Archer back.

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