England were on Monday left blindsided by Jofra Archer’s surprise return to action for a school team in Barbados as the fast bowler steps up his injury recovery.
Archer, who is on his way back from a stress fracture of the elbow, played for Foundation, a side in the Barbados Cricket Association’s second tier linked to his former school, against Lords on the opening day of a three-day game on Sunday — but did so without informing the ECB.
The quick recently signed a new two-year central contract, meaning that England are supposed to be in charge of managing his schedule, but director of men’s cricket Rob Key admitted during a press conference yesterday that he was “not aware” of Archer’s participation in the game.
The Sussex bowler took four wickets in the match, three with right-arm seam and one with the left-arm spin that he frequently bowls in training and warm-ups. He returned to the UK on Sunday night and is not expected to play any further part in the game, which is played across two weekends and resumes on Saturday.
No firm decision has yet been made over whether the ECB will sanction the player over the incident, though it is thought that he is unlikely to be punished at this stage.
Archer has not played since March because of the injury, but has been back bowling in England training during their tour of the West Indies.
The ECB are keen to take an extremely cautious approach with the 28-year-old’s latest comeback.
A spate of injuries has restricted Archer to just seven international appearances over the past two-and-a-half years, and Key confirmed yesterday that he had been withdrawn from next week’s IPL auction in a bid to manage his workload.
“We’re just going to take it slow with him,” Key said. “We don’t want to put any sort of deadlines on him. That’s what we’ve done in the past, we’re trying to learn from what we’ve done in the past with Jofra.
“Now we’re taking control of him coming back. We’re not going to say, ‘You need to get back for this part here’. From what they’ve said, an elbow injury is a complicated place to have an injury, so we just want to take this as slow as possible.
“Jofra was keen to go into the IPL auction but we just feel like, actually, the best way to do this now is just for us to be in control of it. There’s no commitment either way, and we can then just bring him back.”
With Archer skipping the IPL, there is hope that England could ease their prized bowling asset back to fitness in time for the T20 World Cup defence in the Caribbean and USA in June.
