If you ever wanted to tell someone about the excitement and the thrill test cricket brings, you could not have choosen a better piece of cricket than Jofra Archer bowling to Steven Smith. There was so much hype around Jofra Archer before the World Cup started, he lived up to every bit of it. After the super over in the final and the entire world cup in general, his place in the ashes squad was never in doubt but with so much expectations there was just a factor of nervousness creeping in amongst the English supporters. Archer had played only a handful of red ball games so there were question marks about whether he could bowl for an entire day and then come back the next morning and bowl again. I think he has brushed everything aside and put all the doubts to bed with a scintillating debut at the Home of Cricket. England won the toss and batted on a tricky Lord's pitch. They dragged themselves to 258 and had Australia 4 down for not too many. Steven Smith was again stuck at the crease and was looking fairly comfortable having played some very good shots. Smith was batting on around 70 when Archer came on for another spell and hit Smith on his left shoulder immediately. Smith definitely looked a bit uncomfortable while facing Jofra. Batting on 76, Smith pulled Archer just behind square for a boundary. The next ball though, had something different written on it. Archer came steaming in from the pavilion end with the crowd right behind him and he bowled a 150 kph bumper. It was so quick that Smith just took his eyes off the ball and turned his head. That allowed the ball hit Smith right below his left ear. He collapsed to the ground like a sack of potatoes and just couldn't get back on his feet. That was horrifying to see having witnessed what happened with late Phillip Hughes less than 5 years ago. Entire english team ran to check whether he was ok or not and he definitely wasn't. Physios came running on the pitch and took Smith into the dressing room. It wasn't pretty and it surely wasn't enjoyable stuff. But till that point, it was probably one of the best spells of contest between bat and ball I have seen in a long long time. Jofra Archer was bowling thunderbolts at 90 miles an hour and nobody would have volunteered to face him in that mood. Smith played about 15 deliveries from Jofra Archer, a exilarating contest which lasted all but 45 minutes. England were tearing their hair out as to how to get Steven Smith out but I think they have found an answer and the answer is Jofra Archer. I have not seen Steven Smith getting so uncomfortable facing anyone, definitely not since 2015. Whether Smith will be fit for the next test is another question but I will be very surprised if he isn't looking for that bumper when he plays again. England have just found a bowler that they were searching for for the past decade, the one who can bowl 90 miles! Jofra has already sent sheivers down the Australian dressing room and he will cause panic and chaos in all of the dressing rooms in world cricket. I have seen Dale Steyn uproot Michael Vaughan on his debut at the Wanderers, I have seen Anderson tear apart Zimbabwe at Lord's, I have recently seen Bumrah terify South Africa at the newlands on his debut but what I saw in this week was the most frightening debut in at least the last 15 years of test match cricket!
