Our dreams of Jofra

Archer embodies a seductive archetype that comes around like a comet

Jeff Thomson, running late, rolls over, sits upright, thinks of the many annoyances and injustices in his life, remembers how he hates liars and cheats, gets out of bed. He often drinks Scotch instead of beer because beer hangovers wake him up feeling bloated and lethargic. This morning he is in a lousy mood, cranky, but loose, which for Thomson is the optimum state of being for a day's fast bowling.

Those words are the opening to Christian Ryan’s Jeff Thomson Is Annoyed, one of the great pieces of cricket writing, about a spell Thomson bowled in grade cricket on New Year’s Eve, 1973. Some say that Thomson was the fastest bowler of all-time. Those who were at the Bankstown Oval to watch Bankstown versus Mosman – and that was pretty much only the players – say that Thomson’s spell that day was the fastest that the fastest bowler of all-time ever bowled.

Thommo was twenty-three. He was of the opinion that if he’d come from the right side of the tracks, ie, not Bankstown, which was on the far side of the Harbour Bridge where selectors dare not go, he would be opening the bowling for Australia. They’d only given him one chance, at the start of 1973, when he’d bowled with a broken foot and taken 0-100 against Pakistan. He wouldn’t get another until the end of the following year, and soon after that, two things happened. First, in1975, a flatmate of his, Martin Bedkober, died after getting hit in the chest during a grade game. Then, in 1976, Thomson and Alan Turner went for the same catch and his shoulder pinged.

He bowled fast many more times, but that day at Bankstown, as Chris Ryan wrote, “he bowled faster than anyone in the universe ever has, and faster, perhaps, than the universe wanted him to bowl.” There’s no scorecard of the game, just the memories of the players. Thommo took something like 6-4. Greg Bush, the Mosman number five, was in hospital with a gruesome eye injury. He’d remain there, motionless, for a month to save his sight. Another Mosman batter, John Pym, had heard about Thomson’s pace and in the week before the game, set the bowling machine as high as it would go – 100mph. He estimated that Thomson was “ten per cent faster” than that. Barry Knight, the Mosman captain who had played 28 times for England, said that the ball was just a blur, so quick that you couldn’t really see it.

Thommo was a one-off, the highest of the highest percentile that could do this thing. He was nothing like anyone else. His run up was a kind of shuffle, his delivery a piece of supreme athleticism, like the gather and release of a javelin thrower. Geoffrey Boycott once said that the thing about the very quickest bowlers – he was speaking about Michael Holding at the time – was that he always felt they were bowling very slightly within themselves, that they could bowl even faster if they wanted.

Jarrod Kimber’s new book The Art Of Batting has an analysis of Steve Smith before and after he faced Jofra Archer at Lord’s in 2019. Before, over a five year period, Smith had averaged 96.2 against seam bowling. His overall career average was was at 63, and he was one of the best players of very fast bowling, averaging over 65 against deliveries of 87mph and above.

Afterwards, Smith has averaged around 47, bringing his career figure down from 63 to 56.55. Lord’s was not the only factor of course. As Kimber writes, the rise of the wobble ball, which has brought down averages across the board, an elbow injury, natural wear and tear, the ageing process and teams working out how to bowl at Smith’s idiosyncracies, have all contributed. And 56.55 is still several points ahead of almost everyone else, so it’s hardly a disaster.

Inbetween though, came Jofra, and the dream of Jofra. He was on Test debut at Lord’s but had just a month earlier on the same ground, and from the same end, bowled the Super Over that won the World Cup. Smith was well set on 66, Archer had taken 2-38. Who knows how or why, whether Jofra was feeling good or bad, or nothing at all, whether he was just in a dream state that seemed to have him floating to the crease and effortlessly bringing over his arm, but he hit Steve Smith three times, the third on the neck just under the left ear.

Five years after the death of Phil Hughes, these were dreadful moments. Smith got up, retired hurt, returned shaken and was replaced by a concussion sub for the second innings. That was Marnus Labuschagne, who was almost immeditely hit on the head by Archer too, but who played the innings that won him a place in the side that he has only recently lost.

It was electrifying, dangerous, thrilling. The physical jeopardy of the game was exposed. The world’s best player was worked over in a way he’d never been before. It was only in the super slo-mo replays the effort Archer was putting in could really be seen, the way his head dipped in his follow through.

Everyone knew he was quick, but the speed gun was only part of it. There was some kind of trick in the run up and the delivery that hid the usual visual clues that batters might get from bowlers of similar speed, so their reaction time was limited. His bouncer didn’t look much different to any of his other deliveries, and so he hit lots of batters who didn’t have time to pick the length and get out of the way. Steve Smith, the best of all, was one of them. After Lord’s his average against the bouncer dropped from 122 to 50. Against back of a length deliveries at high pace it came down from 100 to 27.5. As I was writing this, he got out hooking at Alzarri Joseph in Grenada.

England got caught up in the dream of Jofra too. It was seductive and powerful. They wanted the dream to happen again and again. They’d been terrorised by generations of fast and dangerous bowlers from Holding and Thomson up to Mitchell Johnson, but this guy was on their side. The desire was too great. He was bowled into the ground in New Zealand and has played just 13 Test matches.

He has also been bested on the speed gun by Mark Wood, and Wood is a remarkable bowler. He too is high in the high percentile. But with Wood, you know what is coming. He will run up very fast and hurl it down as fast as he can, and that will be very fast indeed. It’s predictable, if not easy.

Jofra offers no such certainties. The magic and the mayhem comes from nowhere: sudden movement, steepling bounce, unreadable pace. At Lord’s, he altered not just Steve Smith’s day, but his series and his career, and Steve Smith was the best. At Lord’s the dreams really began. He’ll go there next week a different player, and maybe the injuries and time have knocked off the very, very highest part of his high percentile, like it did for Thommo.

Maybe. But that’s the dream.