Jofra’s 2019: Breaking out at brisk pace

As a lifelong fan of the sport and an aspiring quick, there is nothing that gets my juices flowing like watching a quick bowler run in on TV aiming to demolish the opposition with speed. With the amount of changes that cricket has undergone in the white ball arena and with the pitches becoming more batter friendly around the world, fast bowling had taken a back seat. While the quality was always there, there has been resurgence over the past couple of years with bowlers putting their hands up and saying, I am going to run in and knock batsmen over with my pace.

With the likes of Kagiso Rabada, Mitchell Starc, Jasprit Bumrah and the rest, fast bowlers have once again shown that they have the quality to decide matches on their own. Across the formats, bowlers are finding more and more ways to become lethal and menacing. These two words have found a new name to associate themselves with this year.

That name is Jofra Archer.

The newest player to represent the three lions has taken the cricketing world by storm with his pace and seems to have injected freshness in the way fast bowling is looked at by the cricket fraternity. While his recent spell to Steve Smith brought him even more limelight, Archer has been bowling quick for all of 2019. He could perhaps get no higher praise after David Warner compared him to Dale Steyn, a fast bowling legend who bid adieu to red ball cricket just this past month.

The English cricket board were waiting with eagerness to pick Jofra Archer into the England squad once he was eligible and now it is clear to everyone as to why that was. In a matter of three Test innings he has become captain Joe Root’s strike bowler and go to guy. Whenever the team is in search of wickets, Archer is the man Root calls upon and he has delivered every single time.

The newest kid to become a part of a not so long list of express pace bowlers, Archer has a long career ahead of him.

It is similar in a way to how Eoin Morgan used him in the shorter format. While Stokes took the plaudits from everyone for his fine knock, Archer’s contributions to the side were ubiquitous. Archer’s sudden rise could be compared to that of Jasprit Bumrah. While Bumrah was a find who burst on to the scene with the IPL, Archer did exactly the same thing using the platform of various T-20 leagues around the world. While both have garnered a meteoric rise to the top of everyone’s mind, Archer has that added dynamic to his bowling. He basically has everything to dominate cricket in all formats.

An extremely smooth action, coupled with a run-up that is well worked on, it is easy to see why Jofra Archer is well equipped to bowl quick for a long time. An ode to the pace bowlers of the past, the Wasim’s and the Holding’s, and the more recent Lee’s and Steyn’s, Archer is the new kid on the block who will make this game look ever so hard when on song.

While he has all the assets with him, England cricket board should also remember to use him properly. It is extremely difficult for any fast bowler to consistently bowl well over 145 kph, and for that to happen throughout his career, extreme care of the body and workload management will be crucial. Here is to the hope, that this gem that has been unearthed by England goes a long way in his career, bouncing and knocking the stumps over with aggressive pace bowling.

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