Jofra Archer has undergone a minor elbow operation during his recent absence from the Indian Premier League’s Mumbai Indians and now faces further speculation over his fitness.
The England seamer was absent for three weeks, missing four IPL matches with what his coach, Mark Boucher, described as “a little niggle”, before returning for Saturday’s defeat to Punjab Kings when he bowled his full allocation of four overs and showed no obvious signs of discomfort.
Archer was again missing for Tuesday’s defeat against Gujarat Titans and later it was reported that he had travelled to Belgium for an operation, the fifth on his right elbow inside the past two years.
But Archer reacted angrily to early reports of his surgery. “Putting out an article without knowing the facts and without my consent is crazy,” Archer wrote on Twitter. “Whoever the reporter is shame on you. An already worrying and troubling time for a player and you exploit it for your personal gain, it’s people like you that are the problem.”
The report has increased concerns about the 28-year-old’s participation in this summer’s Ashes. Archer has not played a first-class game since May 2021, when he bowled 18 overs in a draw between Sussex and Kent in the County Championship.
In 23 months since then he has bowled only 98 overs in competitive cricket – in the same time Jimmy Anderson has bowled 934.1 – with none at all between July 2021 and November 2022 as he battled through a succession of elbow problems, a stress fracture of his spine, and surgery to remove from his finger a shard of glass that became embedded when he smashed a fish tank while trying to clean it in a bathtub.
The latest operation was conducted by Roger van Riet, the Belgian specialist who also carried out the surgery that solved Mark Wood’s lingering elbow problem last year.
Mumbai Indians sit seventh in the IPL table and are not on schedule to qualify for the post-season playoffs. If they do not finish in the top four their final game will be on 21 May, after which Archer will turn his attention to the Ashes, which start on 16 June.
Paul Farbrace, the Sussex coach, said recently that Archer was unlikely to play any first-class cricket before then. “I think he will go straight into the Ashes off the back of the IPL,” Farbrace said. “Their plan is that between IPL games he will then bowl some longer spells to get his overs up and make sure that he is match-ready.”
During England’s white-ball tour of Bangladesh last month Archer said he was hoping to play at least one of the five Ashes Tests. “If I can play one game this summer, I’ll be happy,” he said. “If I can play more than one, that’s a bonus.”
