Archer's pace threat offers welcome string to bow in pivotal Test

Seamer's return brings timely refresh, but captain Stokes also needs top order firing to halt India's charge at Lord's

- Simon Burnton

Nearly six years after Jofra Archer made his Test debut against Australia at Lord’s he will finally return after England confirmed that he will replace Josh Tongue as the only change to the team so comprehensively beaten by India at Edgbaston last week.

Archer is a man of few words and, as he has battled through a string of injuries across those intervening years, also not a lot of action. So the conversation that confirmed his return to Test cricket was entirely typical, said England’s captain, Ben Stokes: “I went: ‘Are you ready this week?’ And he went: ‘Been ready.’ That was literally it.”

“Jof is very unassuming. He doesn’t give a lot away. But he’s very, very passionate about playing cricket. He’s a very, very determined human being. And if he wasn’t that way inclined, he probably wouldn’t be in the situation where he’s playing tomorrow.”

Since he walked out here for a thrilling debut performance in 2019, and despite being at least in theory a first-choice player since, Archer has bowled 434.5 overs in Test cricket. That is considerably fewer than Shoaib Bashir, who would have followed the 2019 Ashes as a 15-year-old schoolboy and made his debut just last year, and only marginally more than Dom Bess, not picked since 2021. Archer has bowled only 18 red-ball overs in the past four years. So fans will gather in St John’s Wood on Thursday in excited anticipation of seeing something genuinely rare and potentially thrilling.