England speedster Jofra Archer has been suffering from an elbow injury. Because of that, he has been ruled out of his national team. However, his IPL franchise Rajasthan Royals are still hopeful of getting Jofra Archer to play a few matches, despite his stress fracture on right elbow.
The pacer had not featured in the last three Tests against South Africa. Even the ECB also announced on Thursday that he would not take part in the two-Test tour of Sri Lanka alongside the whole IPL season. Although one scan will take place in a month and Royals’ head coach wants to wait for that before announcing any replacements.
“It is a blow but these things always confront teams,” McDonald said to ESPNcricinfo. “These are the setbacks that you have to contend with. First and foremost, our thoughts are with Jofra. Getting an elbow injury when you are at the top of your game is far from ideal, but watching him from afar it’s been great to see what he’s been able to achieve this year.“
“We’ll see what happens,” he further added. “The ECB have been reasonably solid on ruling him out of the IPL, but we still hold out some hope that he may recover. We’ll get those details over the next 24-48 hours as to the extent of the injury, and we’ll work with the ECB as to what that may or may not look like.”
“I’m sure he’s keen [to play in the IPL]. He loves playing for Rajasthan, but injuries happen, and until more details come to light, we will always hold out hope for a player of that quality. It doesn’t look good at the moment, but we won’t be in any rush to replace him at this moment in time,” he shared.
Whether Jofra Archer gets fit in time or not, McDonald said that they have plenty of players who can do well in the tournament and also cover the absence of the speedster.
“We’ll work out ways to cover off his absence. There’s no rush to sign a replacement unless other teams have injuries and are fighting for the same players. And we might not even be looking for a like-for-like either, because we feel like we’ve got some depth there in the bowling category,” he expressed.
“There aren’t too many Jofra Archers out there but, off the back of the auction, we’ve been able on build a pretty flexible and adaptable squad,” he concluded.
