A few days ago, a ball was thumped back to Jofra Archer at ferocious speed. Most players would have ducked for cover; Archer simply plucked the ball out of the air.

“There’s not much to say really,” he laughs. “You just put your hand there – it either hits your hand and it stays, or it hits your hand and goes for four.”

It encapsulated Archer’s 2017-18: a winter in which everything has stuck. At the end of the English summer, Archer was a highly regarded County Championship Division Two player. Now, he is a globetrotting T20 star, who could fetch more than $1 million (£722,000) when he comes up for auction in the Indian Premier League next week.

That valuation has been based on his displays in the T20 tournaments in Bangladesh – probably the league with the second-best array of overseas talent in the world – and in Australia, where he has taken 14 wickets in eight Big Bash games, the second-highest in the tournament. “I thought I would have gone all right. But I think I’ve gone a lot better than expected,” he says, with more than a little understatement.

The twin forces of T20 and social media mean that cricket is producing global stars faster than ever. Archer, who combines pace that has been clocked at 94mph in the Big Bash, control and a lethal yorker with hitting prowess befitting an all-rounder and effervescent fielding, is rapidly emerging as the next.