Looking into Jofra Archer’s performances in first-class matches as a prep for his upcoming Test Debut

Jofra Archer is about to have one of the most talked up Test debuts in recent times. He has impressed everyone who has had a chance to take a look at him. If you haven’t seen him in action, check this package out:

In this piece, I will take a closer look at Archer’s first class performance, in an attempt to gain a quantitative and objective understanding, ahead of his first Test appearance. Ideally, we would want to use ball & player tracking data and ball by ball commentary or video to do this. But, since we only have access to ball by ball scorecards, that is what we will use. Jofra has a lot to offer with the bat as well, but his ability to make the red ball talk and put on intonations to boot, is what he is in the team for and that is what we will focus on here as well.

Jofra Archer’s First Class Record

We will start with an example of how the media is hyping up Jofra Archer and look at some failures that he has had in first-class cricket. Then we will examine where he has been most successful and how his bowling to left handers may have a quirk that can be exploited with some preparation. Finally, we will evaluate the banter between him & Justin Langer on whether he can or cannot be worn down.

Media Hype

Media Clippings Touting a Recent 6-for & Ton

The media has been all over Archer’s 6 wicket haul, and century with the bat in a recent outing against Gloucestershire 2nd XI, just before the 2nd Ashes test. Again, anyone who saw the video package of the wickets he took, would be hard pressed to deny, that it looked ominous for the Aussies. But there are a few things to note about this outing, that take the edge off a bit:

This wasn’t a first class fixture. It was against a “2nd XI”. He came in at 4-drop to bat. He has never batted at that position in first-class games and usually comes in at the fall of the 7th, 8th or 9th wicket. Archer got batsmen 1, 3, 5, 8, 9 & 10 (three in the tail). In Sussex 2nd XI’s (Archer’s team) first innings, A. Neill from the opposition also got a 5-for, albeit less impressively because he took a lot longer and gave away a lot more runs. Of Archer’s top order scalps in the first innings, only one, Gareth Roderick has played first-class cricket. The other two have played just one list A game and are barely out of their teens. In the second innings, when the conditions were probably less favorable, Archer bowled 19 Overs for just 1 Wicket and gave away 78 runs at an economy of over 4.

Jofra — Is Human, Can Fail

Of the 54 innings that Jofra has bowled in, he went wicketless in 7. That is 13% of the time. This means that of the 8 innings that he is likely to bowl in in the Ashes, he is expected to have at least one, where he isn’t successful.

Archer bowled more than 10 overs in 6 of his 7 wicketless innings (he bowled 8 in the 7th one) and as many as 23 overs in 2 of them. So, it wasn’t that he didn’t get a fair shot. In one of the games, the opposition were routed to 149/8 with Archer bowling 11 of the 52 overs and still going wicketless. In another, he bowled 16 wicketless overs as the opposition piled on a 380/3.

Innings where Archer has gone Wicketless

Note, that the opposition score & overs faced here, are based on the innings progression at the end of Archer’s final spell & not necessarily the final score.

Don’t Count on the Tail

So, Jofra gobbled up the Gloucestershire 2nd XI tail as we saw above. Let’s look at Jofra’s ability to run through the tail in the first-class games that he has played.

Jofra Archer’s Strike Rate Against Different Parts of the Batting Line-up in First Class Matches

It turns out that he does indeed clean up the tail much faster than he takes top and middle order wickets. A little over half of his wickets have come after the opposition has lost at least 5 wickets. Yes, this does include instances where there may have been a top order batsman batting with the tail. This means that the Aussie top order will have to dig in, not just to counter the English attack better than they did in the first test themselves, but because they may not be able to count on the lower order batsmen as much, against Archer. On the other hand, for the English, this could mean that they open the attack with someone more suitable for the job and bring Jofra on as first change. We will look at how Jofra does with the new ball later in this piece. Also, England may benefit by actually unleashing Archer on Warner early as we will see later.

And how does he go through the tail? He uses pace and bowls at the stumps. The proportion of batsmen getting out bowled is almost 2x for the tail than it is for the top and middle order.

Dismissal Modes

Spend Time at the Crease

Since we are asking the batsmen to dig in, let’s also look at how this starts rewarding them. We can take a look at how batsmen fare against Jofra as they spend more and more time on the crease. We will do this by batting position to make sure we are roughly controlling for batting ability, innings progression, ball age etc.

The Benefits of Spending Time at the Crease

We see that top and middle order batsmen who have stuck around for about 25 balls enjoy a non-trivially reduced risk of getting scalped. The data for the tail where batsmen have faced more than 50 balls is likely to be dominated by higher order batsmen who have stuck around to play with the tail and that may be what is driving the higher strike rate. Otherwise, the lower order batsmen really seem to have a tough time against Archer.

Actionable Insights for Left Handed Batsmen

David Warner & Usman Khawaja are going to have to work hard if Archer opens the bowling for England. Archer’s strike rate for left handed openers and 1-down batsmen is almost half that for right handers.

Left Handed Openers & 1-down Batsmen Have a Harder Time At the Crease

This isn’t a case of a few outlier innings by RHB or LHB influencing the average.

Since Australia have that lefty-righty combination going at the top, let us also look at how well Archer adjusts against such a combination. We will use wides, leg-byes and byes as indicators of directional control to assess this.

Directional Control is Lower Against LHB-RHB Combinations

Overall, Archer seems to concede a lot more leg-byes against left-handers than he does against right-handers. This may mean that he is straying down the leg side often. Looking at dismissal modes by batsman handedness, we see that Archer hasn’t gotten a single left handed batsman out LBW in the 131 wickets that he has taken in first-class cricket. The Aussies should keep this in mind for DRS. The proportion of left handed batsmen that he has gotten out bowled is also a bit smaller, mostly coming from the tail. He hasn’t gotten a single left hander in the middle order out bowled.

Can you Wear Him Down?

Australian coach Justin Langer has said that they will try to wear Archer down and Jofra has promptly returned the jab. Let’s take a look at what the data tells us.

We can look at the amount of time spent in the match as well as how much work the bowler has done in that time. In order to assess wear on the bowler, let us look at the proportion of deliveries Archer bowls, that are not dot balls or wicket balls.

The Effect of “Wear” on Jofra (Lower is Better)

We do see here that there is a gradual decrease in the number of tight deliveries that Archer bowls by about 5–7% over the course of an innings. This result is at odds with the higher strike rates that we saw earlier for top order batsmen. It means that the effect of wear over time is not big enough to cover the gap in batting skill brought about by the fall of wickets.

Could this just be a case of being better with the new ball? Well, for one, the above should include cases where Archer bowls with the second new ball in the same innings. Let us also look specifically at Archer’s discipline with the new ball vs the old, and by extension, across the progression of an innings. Although byes and leg-byes can result from really good deliveries or from wicket-keeper errors, we will assume, that most often that is not the case and will consider them, in addition to wides and no-balls as deliveries lacking control in some form.

Lack of Discipline (Byes, Leg-Byes, Wides & No Balls) w/ the New Ball vs the Old Ball

We see that Archer actually bowls with slightly better control with the older ball. One would be tempted to look at Archer’s strike rate from a similar perspective, but, because of the starkly superior strike rate that he has against the tail, looking at the strike rate across an innings, doesn’t tell us much about how “wear” on him, or the ball is affecting his bowling. The above metrics that we used for control/discipline do a much better job of indicating this.

Based on the above two charts, it looks like despite bowling with less control with the new ball than with the old, and despite taking more wickets in later overs, Archer bowls less and less tightly as he bowls more and more overs. So, if your top order has stuck it out, you can possibly take advantage of this. This sounds like a clichéd piece of advice, and it is. It is a reminder of what Test Cricket is all about.