When left is right for Jofra Archer

Cliff Notes – When left is right for Jofra Archer

• Jofra Archer has shown a significant advantage against left-handed batters, averaging 21.66 compared to 35.48 against right-handers in Test cricket, with 40% of his wickets coming from lefties despite bowling only 30% of his deliveries to them.

• Archer’s bowling strategy includes using both around-the-wicket and over-the-wicket angles, effectively challenging left-handers with varied modes of dismissal and maintaining tight lines to the stumps.

• As Archer continues to adapt his game, he faces the challenge of improving his effectiveness against right-handers, particularly with upcoming matches against teams featuring multiple left-handed batsmen.

When left is right for Jofra Archer

Matt Roller

CloseMatt Roller is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. He tweets at @mroller98Jul 24, 2025, 06:22 PM

It was a sight to make any fast bowler purr: a stump lodged in the outfield like a javelin after being uprooted and sent cartwheeling towards the wicketkeeper. It was made even better for Jofra Archer by the fact that it was the batter’s off stump, and better still that the batter in question was Rishabh Pant.

Pant’s wicket on the second afternoon of the Manchester Test was Archer’s seventh of the series, and all seven had been left-handers. That was not a coincidence, but a wider trend of Archer’s career: he has bowled just over 30% of his deliveries in Test cricket to left-handers, but they account for more than 40% of his wickets.

He did finally dismiss a right-hander for the first time this series when he had Jasprit Bumrah caught down the leg side on review, but the story of Archer’s return to England’s Test team has been his threat against lefties. He now averages 35.48 against right-handers in Tests compared to 21.66 against left-handers, and the trend extends across formats.

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The ball that accounted for Pant was the archetypal left-hander’s dismissal to a right-arm seamer in the modern era: angled in from around the wicket on a good length, before shaping away late to hit the off stump. It was once the angle of last resort but in 2025, more than 70% of balls from right-arm seamers to left-handers have been from around the wicket.

But Archer’s threat to left-handers is exacerbated by the fact that he is just as comfortable bowling over the wicket to them, as he proved in his first over of the second morning. He created two chances in three balls to Ravindra Jadeja – the first dropped at gully, the second taken at second slip – which highlighted his great strength of keeping tight to the stumps.

Compared to most right-arm seamers, Archer’s angle across left-handers from over the wicket is much less pronounced. The result is not only that he never offers enough width to be cut, but that he can keep multiple modes of dismissal in play with a single ball: his stock ball pitches in line with leg stump, unlocking the lbw, then shapes away off the seam to challenge the edge.

It was a similar ball to the one that brought him a wicket with the third ball of his comeback at Lord’s. Yashasvi Jaiswal’s natural instinct was to turn Archer into the leg side when he pitched a fraction short of a good length, but his natural angle and shape across him left him closed off and edging straight to Harry Brook at second slip.

As a general rule, Archer uses that angle early to left-handers in an innings – when there is more lateral movement on offer – and goes around later on. The same pattern was obvious at the IPL this year, where he took the new ball for Rajasthan Royals and bowled a contender for ball of the tournament, finding accentuated seam movement to hit Priyansh Arya’s off stump.

It was Stuart Broad who popularised the around-the-wicket angle with England’s seamers, dating back a decade. Advised by Ottis Gibson before the 2015 Ashes that his record was far worse against left-handers, Broad experimented with his angle and was lethal: his average against them was 41.11 before that series and dropped to 24.85 thereafter.

During Archer’s first spell, Broad suggested that he had benefited from scarcity value. “Left-handed batters, when I started [to bowl around the wicket], had faced a lot more from over the wicket,” he said on Sky Sports. “All their training would have been over the wicket. As soon as bowlers came around the wicket, it was a less-practised angle… [they] didn’t line up as well.”

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In fact, Archer may be benefitting from the fact that the pendulum has swung the other way: it is now so common for right-armers to come around the wicket that most left-handers train to face that angle much more often than from over the wicket. It is the cricketing equivalent of Newton’s third law of motion: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

But Archer has already demonstrated within three innings back that he is good enough to challenge left-handers from both angles, and to adjust his plans according to a situation. At Lord’s, he squared up Jaiswal from over the wicket in one innings, and bounced him out from around in the other – and the same was true of Washington Sundar.

His next challenge will be to offer the same threat against right-handers, with KL Rahul and Shubman Gill both winning their individual battles with Archer to this point. But India’s line-up features more left-handers (five) than any in their Test history – and England’s next opponents, Australia, picked five in their more recent Test XIs, too.

Archer is still finding his way back as a red-ball bowler, as evidenced by the fact that his dismissal of Bumrah was only his 50th Test wicket. It was a stark reminder that, even at 30, his injury history means he is learning his trade in this format.