Following his selection for the 14-man ODI team for the England tour of South Africa in January, Jofra Archer is ready to play his first match for England in over two years. His career has recently been hampered by a chronic elbow problem that has necessitated two surgeries, as well as a stress fracture in his lower back that prevented him from playing the full 2022 home summer.
He did, though, return to the England setup in a promising way last month in the UAE, playing in exhibition games against the Test team and working out with the England Lions. He delivered a devastating bouncer that struck Zak Crawley in the head during one of his nine overs in the match.
In addition, Archer will play two games for MI Cape Town in the inaugural SA20, a new local league in South Africa that starts in January before the three-match England tour. His return is a part of a cautious return to play across all forms.
Archer admitted that he was still extremely early in his return to full health following his bowling performance in Abu Dhabi last month and described his return to play against. I’d rather take these last few months extremely seriously, maybe even more seriously than all the counselling, he said.
During the tour, Harry Brook might end up with all of England’s caps. Due to his great performance in the most recent Test series in Pakistan, when he accumulated 468 runs at 93.60, including three hundreds, he was chosen for the first time in an ODI team.
Ben Duckett is back in the ODI squad for the first time since 2016, and he also performed brilliantly on the tour of Pakistan with both red and white balls. Reece Topley is reportedly making “great progress” in his recovery after suffering a freak ankle injury after tripping over a boundary marker prior to England’s successful T20 World Cup campaign in Australia last month.
In order to give Liam Livingstone time to heal, he has been passed over. Livingstone suffered a knee injury during England’s triumph over Pakistan in the first Test earlier this month in Rawalpindi. Sam Billings and James Vince, who both took part in England’s most recent ODI series against Australia in November, as well as Will Jacks of Surrey, who made his Test debut in the same match and claimed six first-inning wickets, are also ineligible.
Moeen Ali, Jofra Archer, Harry Brook, Sam Curran, Ben Duckett, Dawid Malan, Adil Rashid, Jason Roy, Phil Salt, Olly Stone, Reece Topley, David Willey, and Chris Woakes make up the England ODI team.