ECB's managing director of England men's cricket Rob Key (Main), Jofra Archer, who Key hopes will make a Test comeback next summer (inset)

Archer was not originally included in the list of players to go under the hammer on November 24 and 25, with franchises told just three days before the auction that he would be available for sale. The 29-year-old is established as one of the tournament’s premier bowlers, but originally planned to miss the competition as he continues his recovery from a spate of injuries. In particular, IPL 2025 clashes with the early rounds of the County Championship, in which both he and the ECB hoped he would prove his fitness to earn selection for England’s home series against India and the Ashes tour that followed.

Archer’s u-turn was prompted by a new IPL rule which aims to deter overseas stars from picking and choosing which editions they appear in. Under the rule, players who have played in the IPL before will be banned from future editions should they choose to sit out an auction.

Speaking to Jo Harman on In The Bubble on the Wisden Patreon platform, Key explained the negotiations that the ECB had had with both the BCCI and Archer over his availability.

“The stuff recently with the IPL, it wasn't so long ago we had no idea what they were going to do regarding banning players for years to come [if they didn’t enter the IPL 2024 mega-auction],” Key said. “So if I take what happened with Jofra, Jofra is always brilliant to deal with. I'm sitting around talking with Jofra, and we’re sort of like, the best thing might be to miss the IPL this year and get yourself ready, and we'll start building your loads up. In an ideal world, this is, because we're thinking he’d be fine. But in an ideal world, if you can get through a bit of Championship cricket and then you can start the Test summer.

“And he was happy with that, Jof, but we had to look and see what India were going to do. We made the case that he's still in part of a managed workload period. And the problem with that was that he's then bowling with two slips and a gully and bowling 90 mile an hour in the T20s in the West Indies. So it's hard to make the case that he's injured when he's bowling like that.

“And they came back after a bit of back and forth, and said, no, he won't be allowed to go into this year, next year, from then on. So then you start thinking, that could be about $4 million that he loses out. And then it's on him, really: 'So Jofra, what do you want to do? This is your career, your life. You'll still be able to play Test cricket, we believe. There's a lot of water to go under the bridge for that, but we still think you'll be alright. We'll just be a couple of months behind, but we'll have to find a different [way], like with all of our bowlers now, of getting them doing that loading throughout the IPL, which isn't going to be easy, but that's the world we live in now.’

“And so then, Jofra decided that he felt the best thing for him was to go into the IPL, which we had no issue with, and then do that loading throughout the IPL and get himself ready for the Test series that way. But they're tricky decisions because you don't quite know what's coming. You don't know what other governing bodies are going to do so we're very much in a new world.”

The participation of England players in the IPL has been a topic of debate ever since the competition started, with Kevin Pietersen retiring from international white-ball cricket for a time following a row over his availability for the competition. The ECB’s attitude has softened in recent years, with players even missing Test cricket to feature, and the IPL is set to be the one exception to a new rule banning county players from playing in overseas tournaments during the English summer. For Key, the danger is that players will give up playing for England if too many opportunities are denied to them.

“All of a sudden I'll get franchise owners ringing me about our players and that wasn't really [there before]. It was there for the IPL when I started, but that has exploded in the two, two and a bit years I've done this job. And they're tricky, because you don't quite know where it's going to end up.

“I don't think we want to be in a place where centrally contracted England players walk away from English cricket, because, let's say, a franchise sign someone like Jofra for $2 million, play all year round, we won't see him for England. These franchise owners, they won't say, ‘Oh, that's fine. We'll pay him $2 million and you go and bowl 20 overs a day in a Test match.’ That's done. So you've got to try and think about all the unintended consequences of every decision you make, and a lot of the time you might not see what's coming, but that's the trick, trying to predict all of them.”

Archer hasn’t played Test cricket since England’s 2020/21 tour of India, with elbow and back stress injuries limiting him to just seven England appearances between March 2021 and May 2024. England have treated him with extreme care, reintroducing him first into T20 cricket in ahead of the T20 World Cup before an ODI comeback against Australia at the end of the summer. Key revealed that, despite Archer’s IPL participation, the hope is still that Archer plays some Test cricket in the 2025 home season.

“At the moment that's what we're on course for,” Key said. “I might be wrong with this, but the plan is that he'll be ready to play … he was only ever going to play one or two Tests this summer, probably, at a push, three. He's also got to get in that team. Now, I think he could be the best bowler, one of the best bowlers we've had, but he's got to find form. He's got to be able to show that he can sustain it through a whole four-day game.

“It's not a case that he's fit, he just comes into play. We’ve got some very good bowlers around now, but I don't see any reason why not at the moment, but we'll keep monitoring it, and then, we just try not to get too far ahead with him. Every single bit along the way, the Champions Trophy will be another tick. Okay, let's move on from there. So I don't see any reason why he can't.”

Archer signed an extension to his central contract this week, with England captain Ben Stokes also revealing that he had received a text from the right-arm quick reading simply ‘Zimbabwe’, as a signal of intent that he hoped to make a return in the one-off Test at Trent Bridge ahead of the India series.

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