Jofra Archer may have been diagnosed with a right elbow stress fracture but Rajasthan Royals aren't yet losing hopes of him regaining full fitness before the 13th edition of the IPL, head coach Andrew McDonald said.
The speedster missed the last three Tests of England's just-concluded series in South Africa because of workload concerns having delivered more overs than anyone else for his country since his debut in the marquee summer last year.
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After scans on return revealed the extent of the injury to his elbow, Archer was ruled out of the entire winter, including the limited-overs leg of the tour in South Africa, Tests in Sri Lanka as well as the IPL in order to be fit for the summer back home where England takes on West Indies, Pakistan in important World Test Championship fixtures.
However, with Archer's elbow set to go through further scans in four weeks' time, and the Test series versus the Calypso Kings not beginning until atleast two weeks after the likely conclusion of the IPL, McDonald informed that the Royals would await further updates on Archer before looking for any replacement of the 24-year-old.
"It is a blow but these things always confront teams," McDonald told ESPNcricinfo. "These are the setbacks that you have to contend with. First and foremost, our thoughts are with Jofra. Getting an elbow injury when you are at the top of your game is far from ideal, but watching him from afar it's been great to see what he's been able to achieve this year."
"We'll see what happens. The ECB have been reasonably solid on ruling him out of the IPL, but we still hold out some hope that he may recover," he added. "We'll get those details over the next 24-48 hours as to the extent of the injury, and we'll work with the ECB as to what that may or may not look like."
"I'm sure he's keen [to play in the IPL]. He loves playing for Rajasthan, but injuries happen, and until more details come to light, we will always hold out hope for a player of that quality. It doesn't look good at the moment, but we won't be in any rush to replace him at this moment in time."
Finding a like-for-like replacement of a bowler of Archer's quality in white-ball cricket will be extremely difficult. "We'll work out ways to cover off his absence," McDonald said. "There's no rush to sign a replacement unless other teams have injuries and are fighting for the same players. And we might not even be looking for a like-for-like either, because we feel like we've got some depth there in the bowling category."
"There aren't too many Jofra Archers out there but, off the back of the auction, we've been able on build a pretty flexible and adaptable squad."
(Inputs from ESPNcricinfo)
