Day two in Leeds was meant to be one spent at leisure for Jofra Archer. You know, feet up, chatting to colleagues, perusing the match-day programme, enjoying the buzz of the England dressing room while the guys paid to bat are knocking the shine off the ball.
Archer had been craving this the previous evening, too. Having rocked up 20 minutes late on the first morning due to some issues with the local road system, and then backed up his head‑banging Lord’s show with a six‑wicket exhibition of more measured slice and dice, his very first utterance on leaving the field was, “It means I get to rest”.
Did it happen? Did it heck. A night’s sleep and two hours watching the dressing room door swing on its hinges like a wild west saloon bar was as good as it got. Before the Test Archer was spotted batting like the idiosyncratic Steve Smith in nets; come England’s chance to turn the screw on the Australians under blue skies in Yorkshire, his teammates had opted to mimic the punch-drunk version.
And so at 1.44pm, when he might have been settling into the crossword after lunch, Archer found himself striding out to the crease with bat in hand. England sat in ruins at 54 for seven in the 25th over, Chris Woakes having been freshly dispatched by a Pat Cummins short ball that, given the field, could not have been more predictable had the bowler shouted a warning beforehand.
With Jack Leach the last man out in the following over, soon it would be time to strap on the bowling boots once more. There was some afternoon fun when he returned an inflatable beachball to the Western Terrace. But by 5.55pm, at which point Australia had swollen their lead to 247 at 135 for three, Archer suddenly aborted his ninth over and hobbled off with what was hoped to be cramp judging by the smile on his face.
Archer had touched 90mph on speedometer in his earlier spells but given the hopelessness of the situation - and his tally of 69.2 overs in the last seven days - the words of Michael Holding, who spoke of “abuse” after his fellow fast-bowler’s debut, sprung to mind. But it goes beyond simply being Joe Root’s new go-to man.
There had been a poignant piece of news that floated across the Pennines during that Ashes-torching morning session, some time between Ben Stokes needlessly squirting a wide and full delivery to slip and Joe Denly needlessly driving away from his body and edging to the wicketkeeper: Lancashire announced they will be parting ways with Haseeb Hameed at the end of the season.
The hierarchy at Old Trafford has decided against a contract renewal after three years of seeing only occasional spikes on an otherwise flatlining run of scores and there are probably at least a couple of takeaways here.
The first is that Hameed, while still only 22 and with time to perform a handbrake turn, offers a cautionary tale about hype and expectation. He looked to the manor born during three impish outings in India in 2016, such that many believed his place to be locked in for a long and delicious Test career. There are no givens in sport. The second is that since Root made his debut in late 2012, Hameed is the only other specialist batsman to enter the fold and average over 40 during this time. Many believe his subsequent funk to coincide with belatedly playing 50-over cricket, where there is an imperative to get bat on ball, while others may trace this back to his time with England the winter where the once-dubbed Baby Boycott was flooded with messages of batting positively.
The point to all this, as the Ashes slip out of Root’s reach, is that, if England are to keep the tail burning on the Archer comet, they must identify and develop specialist red-ball batsmen who put a high price on their wicket and can give the guy a break.
With the widely disliked 100-ball caper crashing into the height of the English summer next year, this will not be easy.
