England seamer Jofra Archer is suffering from an elbow injury and he's ready to take some time off cricket until the long-standing problem goes away. Archer has undergone another surgery to attain fitness on time for the much-awaited Test series against India.
The speedster last featured in the England side against India in the T20I series in India. The injury in right elbow made him miss the first phase of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 as well.
Archer, in his column for The Daily Mail, wrote that he won't do any good to himself by returning to cricket without full recovery. Hence, one of the top pacers in the world would like to sit out until he gets rid of this problem.
“The way I am looking at things is that I would rather miss a few weeks of a year so that I have a few more years in my career. I just want to get this injury sorted once and for all and that’s why I’m not looking that far ahead or at dates for a return to action — because if I don’t get this right, I won’t play any cricket. Period. I am not going to do myself any good by coming back before I’m fully fit, so I will take my time and do what is best for me and my life,” he wrote.
“One thing I am determined about post elbow operation is not to rush my comeback because my primary focus is to be playing for England in the Twenty20 World Cup and Ashes later this year. Those are my targets. If I come back before then and manage to play in the home Test series against India — then fine, so be it. If I don’t, I am quite prepared to sit out the summer,” he continued.
Archer is set to miss at least another month of cricket and it includes the two-match Test series against New Zealand starting June 2, and the three-match Twenty20 series against Sri Lanka starting June 23.
England will also play a 3-match ODI series against Sri Lanka, starting June 29, and another 3-match ODI series against Pakistan, which begins on July 8. They will then face India for a five-match Test series starting on August 4.
“With any injury, if there are other ways around curing the problem you would usually try them — this is no different. When you have an operation, you are altering the body. You are going into a perfectly fine piece of tissue and when you do so, you can invite all sorts of complications. The intention might be to solve one thing, but it can mess up others. One example is that it creates scar tissue so you must be prepared to deal with everything that comes with that. In contrast, having injections doesn’t change much,” he explained.
Archer has played 13 Tests, 17 one-day internationals and 12 T20s for England, and the speedster was also part of the the World Cup winning team in 2019.
(With The Daily Mail Inputs)
