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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Archer credits teammates for Super Over poise

by

Sports Desk
2201 days ago
20190714
England's Jofra Archer hugs teammate Jos Buttler after bowling his team to the ICC World Cup title over New Zealand at Lord’s, London, on Sunday. England won in after a Super Over tiebreaker after the scores ended tied after 50 overs each.

England's Jofra Archer hugs teammate Jos Buttler after bowling his team to the ICC World Cup title over New Zealand at Lord’s, London, on Sunday. England won in after a Super Over tiebreaker after the scores ended tied after 50 overs each.

AP

Bar­ba­di­an-born fast bowler Jofra Archer has cred­it­ed Eng­land skip­per Eoin Mor­gan, all-rounder Ben Stokes and Joe Root for calm­ing his nerves be­fore and dur­ing the Su­per Over he bowled to give the hosts their first-ever ICC World Cup at Lord's, Lon­don, on Sun­day.

Speak­ing af­ter he bowled the Su­per Over against New Zealand bats­men Jim­my Nee­sham and Mar­tin Gup­till and guid­ed his team to their first World Cup in the com­pe­ti­tion's 44-year his­to­ry, Archer said he want­ed the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and hoped he would be giv­en the chance by Mor­gan.

“I ac­tu­al­ly went to Morgs first. I had an idea I was go­ing to do it but I want­ed to dou­ble-check that he want­ed me to do it,” Archer said.

“I think it was go­ing fine un­til the six, and then Stokes told me even be­fore the over: ‘win or lose, to­day does not de­fine you. Every­one be­lieves in you.’ To back up what he said, if we did lose there is a T20 com­ing up next year and I would have an­oth­er chance.”

The match end­ed in a tie af­ter New Zealand re­strict­ed Eng­land to 241 all out in their 50 overs, the same score the Ki­wis got but for on­ly eight wick­ets in their turn at the crease. Af­ter both teams al­so scored 15 in the Su­per Over, Eng­land were ad­judged the win­ners by virtue of hav­ing scored more bound­aries - 26-16- in the match.

Archer said some in­spi­ra­tional words from Root al­so helped him to hold off the Kwis charge al­though he was hit for a six by Nee­sham two balls in­to the Su­per Over.

“I knew that if we did lose, it wasn’t the end of the world. I am glad that the guys look up to me and they trust me to do it. The skip­per re­al­ly be­lieved in me, even af­ter the six. A lot of cap­tains could have had their head in their hands, but he was re­al­ly calm and re­al­ly un­der­stand­ing.”

He added, "I can’t stress enough, it was pret­ty lucky to­day. I am re­al­ly grate­ful that we won."

Archer was draft­ed in­to the Eng­land side just ahead of the World Cup af­ter be­ing ini­tial­ly left out the side but has been one of the stand­outs of the World Cup. The 24-year-olds pace, bounce and ac­cu­ra­cy trou­bled the top bats­men at the tour­na­ment.

How­ev­er, Archer, who rep­re­sent­ed the Weast In­dies at the 2014 World Youth Cup be­fore be­ing dropped by the se­lec­tors there­after, on­ly qual­i­fied for the tour­na­ment in the first place af­ter the Eng­land and Wales Crick­et Board sud­den­ly amend­ed their el­i­gi­bil­i­ty rules and he qual­i­fied by virtue of his fa­ther be­ing a UK cit­i­zen.

Hav­ing per­for­mance cred­itably in the In­dia Pre­mier League be­fore now, Archer ad­mit­ted yes­ter­day that he could not have asked for a bet­ter start to his in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reer with Eng­land.

“I have had the best two months of my life so far – mak­ing my de­but, mak­ing my World Cup de­but, play­ing in the fi­nal in the space of two months. It is re­al­ly spe­cial to me and hope­ful­ly I can look back 15 years down the line and say I was a part of that,” he said.

“I hope that any kids watch­ing that want to play crick­et now for the whole week, for the whole year and try to pur­sue it to be pro­fes­sion­al. We want to in­spire the next gen­er­a­tion be­cause some­one will have to take over from us.”


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