Jofra Archer is back on target

Kolkata: Eat, sleep, train, send wickets tumbling, repeat — Jofra Archer seems to have finally hit his stride. Five wickets in this IPL, three of them comprehensively bowled, all well above the 140 kph mark, with a decent economy too — you couldn’t have asked for a better comeback.

There is more to Archer of course, tantalisingly in red-ball cricket. But so few and far between have been the Test teasers that to imagine Archer in full tilt, one has to literally go back to Ahmedabad, 2021.

Which is where life probably came full circle for him on Wednesday, albeit in a totally different format. This wait in the IPL has been long, two years to be specific.

Longer if you don’t want to include the 2023 season that finished even before it started. Two wickets in five matches, the economy in tatters, Archer would have ideally been better off without that stint. 2025 started on a worse note too. He leaked 76 runs to Sunrisers Hyderabad, then averaged 13 per over against KKR. Too many runs, too little impact, Archer wasn’t clicking.

Till the match against Chennai Super Kings. First over, with the field up, Rachin Ravindra was chasing the ball and so Archer pitched it back of the length to find a healthy edge. Now against Punjab Kings, to Priyansh Arya who has shown how well he clears the boundary. Not against Archer though, not to a delivery that pitched on leg stump and nipped away sharply. To Sheryash Iyer he was fuller but quicker, resulting in a simple ‘you-miss-I hit’ moment. Stumps shattered, egos given a reality check, Archer was literally trolling India’s best after taking a nap during the first innings.

“The beginning of the tournament did happen… you have to cash in on days like these and take the bad ones in your stride,” Archer said after that match.

Special though was Shubman Gill’s dismissal. Gill’s weakness against the nipping in delivery is well-documented, as is his edginess against raw pace. But Gill is also a good batter. Which is pertinent to this dismissal since the worth of a batter is directly proportional to his ability in covering his weaknesses. Also important is the pitch, which if not diabolical, shouldn’t bother a good batter. Ahmedabad was a nice and easy track but Archer still made the ball bend exactly the way Gill would have feared.

The pace was so overwhelming that Gill looked slow on the bat swing even in real time. But to pitch the ball exactly where it should have, and make it shape to the exact degree that would create that massive gap between bat and ball, is a god-gifted skill. On an otherwise bad day for Rajasthan Royals, this was easily the thumbnail of the highlights reel.

That Archer was slowly working towards this level of returns was already flagged by Royals bowling coach Shane Bond.

“What Jofra has gone about is just training with real focus and intensity. His training’s been outstanding. And really what he’s done from the last couple of games is just transferred his training into the game. He’s prepared well in terms of the plans off the field, trained really well, and then just gone out there and executed. And when he does, he’s one of the best in the world,” Bond had said in the pre-match press conference.

Giving Archer the new ball seems to be making quite a statement too.

“We also recognise that giving him the new ball has made a big difference for us,” Bond had said. “We’ve put runs on the board and people have found it hard against him with the new ball that’s moving around with his pace and his bounce. So, I think him leading our attack has given the rest of the bowling group a lot of confidence. I know he’s got a lot of confidence.”

If not the rhythm, expect Archer to at least carry forward that confidence into the rest of the summer, if— and that’s a big if — he is deemed fit for the India Test series from June, followed by the Ashes.

This may not be Jofra Archer from 2019 but hopefully a more mature version of him, acutely aware of his body, and even more perhaps of what he can or can’t control.

The pace is back, the swing has been prominent and Archer announcing he was only gone for a while is probably the best thing that could have happened to contemporary fast bowling.