Jofra Archer firing like a Trueman of old English bowling greats

England bowler Jofra Archer leaves the field holding the ball after claiming six wickets during day one at Headingley. Picture: Getty Images

Under the stairs that lead to the Fred Trueman enclosure at Headingley, there is a line from John Arlott in commemoration of the great Yorkshire and England bowler of yesteryear.

“A fast bowler not just in achievements, but a fast bowler in heart and mind,” he wrote of Trueman. And if Arlott was alive today, the great commentator and journalist would recognise the same mentality in Jofra Archer. A fast bowler in heart and mind and one who is keeping the Ashes alive for England.

Archer was not on the kind of fearsome form here as he was at Lord’s — there were no helmets battered, no bones broken and no batsmen sent packing — but in his second Test he took his maiden five-wicket haul, finishing with six for 45 in 17.1 overs, to ensure that Joe Root’s decision to bowl first did not blow up in his captain’s face.

At one stage, it looked like doing so, until Archer returned to alter the course of a rain-shortened day.

He bowled three spells. An extended first one of nine overs, prolonged because of bad light and rain, in which he was not at his best, but took the first wicket to fall, that of Marcus Harris, caught behind. Later there were two short, sharp bursts of four overs, in which he took a brace of wickets in each, including a rejuvenated David Warner, who made one of only two half-centuries in the innings. Then, just for good measure, he returned to bowl the last over of the day, and complete the job, which he did with his first ball.

Archer bowled only one ball from the end that Trueman generally bowled, an end occupied instead for much of the day by Stuart Broad. This was fitting, too, because on a day when Broad might very well have been England’s best but not most successful bowler, he joined Trueman in having taken more Test wickets on this ground (44) than anyone else. Broad’s opening spell, in which he passed Warner’s bat a dozen times or more, might have even pleased the old curmudgeon, so full was the length, so late the swing. The ball to get Travis Head in mid-afternoon, moving late to clip off stump, was the day’s best.

Archer’s pace with the new ball had been a notch or 10 down from Lord’s. Was this the result of a physical hangover from the second Test? Had he been warned about overdoing the bouncer on this most English-style of Test grounds? Maybe a bit of both. Still, his opening spell was good enough for new boy Harris, who somehow touched a nasty lifter, which was the last piece of action before the first interruption for rain. On and off we went before lunch; on and off we went after lunch and on and off went Usman Khawaja, caught behind tickling Broad down the leg side, to leave Australia 2-54 at tea.

It was a grand day to bowl. How good a toss was it to win? Consider this collector’s item, in the 19th over, the third ball after tea. The bowler was Woakes, the batsman Marnus Labuschagne, the only other Australian bar Warner to come to terms with the movement. The result? That would be five wides, from a ball that started a little wide, swung wider still, before it seamed violently off the pitch, passing the batsman harmlessly. It then continued on its path, evading Jonny Bairstow’s dive, before scuttling between first and second slip and running away to the boundary.

Before this match, Woakes had bowled 840 overs in Test cricket. Of those 5220 balls bowled, only 16 were delivered wide. Thirteen of those 16 wides were from bouncers that had climbed too high over the batsman’s head. In other words, before that third ball after tea, Woakes had bowled three lateral wides in Test cricket; only three that the umpires considered too wide for the batsman.

The clouds hung low, the rose-shaped floodlights remained in operation throughout, and the gloom was constant; so much so that, despite the lights, the umpires took the players from the field before tea because of it. They offered Root the chance to bowl spin then, to prolong play, but he was not in the mood to be generous. Yorkshiremen are like that.

The problem was that his change bowlers were. That third ball after tea heralded an hour of bowling from Woakes and Ben Stokes so profligate that 70 runs came in 11 overs, as Warner and Labuschagne set about restoring Australia’s position. At 2-136, Root’s scowl at first slip was noticeable, but even as the runs flowed, there was always the suspicion that wickets would come if control could be asserted. Woakes and Stokes bowled 21 overs all told, conceding 96 runs; Broad and Archer conceded 77 in 31 overs, taking eight wickets between them.

So, Root turned again to Broad and Archer. Warner, fighting hard for the cause, edged one from Archer finally; Broad was too good for Head; Matthew Wade played on, a complex marriage of thigh-pad and glove sending the ball to the base of the stumps. In the interlude, Tim Paine was trapped leg-before, after which Archer returned again to get James Pattinson caught at slip and Patrick Cummins caught behind. Australia had lost 6-38.

All the time, Labuschagne gave more than a passing imitation of the man he replaced, leaving the ball outside off stump with better judgment than anyone else, and even occasionally with the kind of flourish for which Steve Smith has become renowned. When the bowlers were too straight he picked them off clinically and cut fiercely when they offered width. The rest, he ignored.

He has played two eye-catching innings, at Lord’s and here, in tough circumstances and looks a stayer, coping as he has with a battered grille at Lord’s, courtesy of Archer, and a battered box here, courtesy of Broad. As with Smith, it took something unusual to beat him: a knee-high full toss from Stokes that up-ended him.

He fell like a man who had a rug pulled from his feet, an unworthy end to a fine innings.

THE TIMES