Ashes workload bowls Jofra Archer over as Australia leave England with mountain to climb

There was a rack of T-shirts for sale in the Yorkshire shop on Friday emblazoned with the odds 500-1.

Those were the magic numbers when The Miracle of Headingley came to pass in 1981.

It will take something similarly outlandish to rescue England from the hole they dug for themselves on Friday. The Ashes all but slipped away and Jofra Archer went with them.

As he wearily limped off with cramp halfway through an over in the evening session, the full extent of the responsibility he has taken on may have been dawning.

Carrying England can be back-breaking work.

Archer may have thought he had earned a day off from the hard graft of fast bowling after routing Australia on day one.

But after 27.5 overs and the lowest England innings in an Ashes Test since Donald Bradman was prowling the crease he was press-ganged back into action.

As he ran in at the start of Australia’s innings, the spectators still numb from the capitulation they had witnessed, smoke billowed up from behind the West Stand. Bails being burned maybe?

England needed more heroics from their bowling talisman but a player can only go the well so many times in a summer.

Archer’s own brief taste of batting at Headingley had been a sobering experience.

Targeted by Pat Cummins with a succession of short balls, the Australian leaned in – probably not to ask after his health – after Archer gloved one away to get off the mark.

As the bowler who had taken out Steve Smith at Lord’s, Archer was a marked man.

His response to the barrage was some entertaining flailing but when he chose to leave one, his method of ducking with the bat left up like a periscope, cost him his wicket as a slight deflection carried through to the wicketkeeper.

There were times on Friday when a six-month posting on a submarine would have been preferable to the pain of seeing the Ashes slipping away.

The dispiriting experience for Archer was a reality check in what, up to now, has been a dream international career with a World Cup winners’ medal and 11 wickets in his two Tests.

He has been a gem of a find for England but precious jewels make men greedy.

After 44 overs at Lord’s and another 25 and a half here, Archer’s workload has been colossal in back-to-back Tests. Part of that is down to circumstance – if you have a batting line-up which can turn to blancmange – it carries with it the risk of short rest periods. But it is also down to Joe Root.

It is easy to see why the England captain would fall to the temptation to call upon the player Australia fear most but the two roles of strike weapon and shirehorse are incompatible and the price was paid on Friday.

Having bowled the last over before tea – his eighth of the innings – Archer trailed off last of all, shoulders slumped. He looked shot.

Archer is instinctively a lover of life and a hard man to keep down for long. As the crowd made their own in the West Stand in the final session by knocking an inflatable watermelon around, a steward – clearly determined that they should have no joy at all in their day – intervened and removed it.

This was the cue for Archer to run round the field to take the beach ball off the steward and knock it back into the crowd.

The act brought the loudest cheer of the day and a chant of ‘Super Jof’ from the thirsty participants.

Even ‘Super Jof’ is only human though and as he was called back to bowl again at 5.50pm his exertions took their toll.

The speed gun barely reached 80mph before he pulled up with cramp in his left leg after the fourth ball.

Unable to complete the over he made his way off the field, dragging his rigid left leg behind him like an iron girder.

If ever there was an image to sum up a side’s sorry plight it was this – England washed up; the destroyer destroyed.

He returned 40 minutes later but in reality to a lost cause. The Ashes are staying Down Under.

source: express.co.uk