If I Don’t Get This Right, I Won’t Play Any Cricket: Jofra Archer Provides An Honest Assessment On His Potential Return

England pacer Jofra Archer has provided an honest assessment on his potential return to international cricket following his elbow surgery.

Jofra Archer had been grappling with the elbow injury ever since he picked up a stress fracture in early 2020. The English pacer continued to play by taking painkillers but the injury kept flaring up.

Archer, who missed the now suspended Indian Premier League due to a combination of his elbow injury plus the freak fish tank accident, returned to County Cricket earlier this month but the injury once again surfaced, and didn’t bowl a single over during the second innings.

Archer finally underwent surgery on his troublesome elbow last Friday and the right-hander is now willing to sacrifice a few weeks or even months of cricket in order to give himself the best possible chance to fully recover from injury.

“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,” Archer wrote in his column for the Daily Mail.

Jofra Archer has already been ruled out from the Test series against New Zealand and while the exact timeline of his comeback is still not clear, one would feel that the English speedster would most likely return for the Test series against India in August.

However, the 26-year-old is in no rush as he admitted that his main aim to be fit and ready for the T20 World Cup and the Ashes Down Under, if even if that means him missing the Indian Test series.

”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,” Archer revealed.

The right-arm bolter also explained his prior reluctance in going under the knife.

“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,” Archer signed off.

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