Difficult seeing Jofra Archer play Test cricket again: Kevin Pietersen

England's Jofra Archer has been plagued with injuries since playing his last match in March 2021. Putting salt on wounds, Archer was ruled out for the upcoming English season earlier this week after suffering a stress fracture in his lower back. 

Opining on the development, former England player Kevin Pietersen has said that it will be difficult for the paceman to play Test match cricket again.

According to IANS, Pietersen said, "It's terrible news for poor Jofra Archer that he'll miss the whole summer. He's shown moments of brilliance for England and other teams, and it's just a horrible blow for him. It's difficult to imagine him recovering from this to play long-form cricket again; that's the horrible reality. Hopefully, he can still carve out a top-level white-ball career."

Thus far in his brief career, the Barbados-born has played 13 Tests for his adopted country, taking 42 wickets, including three five-wicket hauls.

The former batter also said that too much science could be damaging in the long run.

"His stress fracture to the back follows a pattern of these injuries being sustained by England bowlers. I do think that the number of sports scientists can complicate things far too much. When I was playing, fast bowlers used to bowl a lot of overs in the nets and got bowling fit," he explained.

The 41-year-old finds it strange that modern-age bowlers are more injury-prone while players of the gone era have had injury-less careers.

"They (several past fast-bowling greats) went through the hard yards in their preparation and weren't molly-coddled in between games. Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh, Allan Donald, Shaun Pollock, Glenn McGrath and all the other greats weren't told how many balls they could bowl by a sports scientist every day.

Mumbai Indians bought the English paceman for INR 8 crore earlier in the year, but he could not make himself available for the showpiece league. However, Archer was looking forward to playing for Sussex in the upcoming T20 Blast, but that too is a train-long-gone for the 27-year-old.