NOT­TING­HAM, Eng­land – Jofra Archer will play for Eng­land in the open­ing One Day In­ter­na­tion­al (ODI) against Aus­tralia at Trent Bridge on Thurs­day, mak­ing his first ODI ap­pear­ance in 18 months.

Eng­land stand-in cap­tain Har­ry Brook on Wednes­day con­firmed that the Bar­ba­di­an-born pac­er will fea­ture in the first game of the five-match se­ries,

It will be the first time Archer will turn out in an ODI since March 2023.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Brook said there would be no re­stric­tions on Archer’s work­load.

The 29-year-old Archer has been care­ful­ly man­aged by Eng­land af­ter el­bow and back in­juries in re­cent years.

“He’s ob­vi­ous­ly a world-beat­er, and it’ll be nice to have him along­side me and go­ing out there and tak­ing them on,” Brook told BBC Sport.

“I haven’t faced him much in the nets, I try and stay away from that.

“He’s our strongest seam­er and he’s got a lot of ex­pe­ri­ence be­hind him in white-ball as well. I’m look­ing for­ward to work­ing with him and see­ing him op­er­ate again,” he added.

In­jury has lim­it­ed Archer to just 21 ODI ap­pear­ances with on­ly sev­en of those com­ing since he played a star­ring role as Eng­land won the 2019 World Cup.

Since re­turn­ing from in­jury, he has played ex­clu­sive­ly T20 crick­et.

With an Ash­es se­ries in Aus­tralia now 14 months away, this is a sig­nif­i­cant step up for him.

A six-over spell for Sus­sex’s sec­ond XI ear­li­er this sum­mer was the most he has bowled in a pro­fes­sion­al match this year, while he al­so played some club crick­et in Bar­ba­dos pri­or to the T20 World Cup in the Caribbean.

An­oth­er Bar­ba­di­an in Ja­cob Bethell is al­so in Eng­land’s ODI squad. Bethell played in the pre­ced­ing T20 se­ries which drew 1-1.

SQUAD

Eng­land: Har­ry Brook (cap­tain), Jofra Archer, Ja­cob Bethell, Bry­don Carse, Jor­dan Cox, Ben Duck­ett, Will Jacks, Liam Liv­ing­stone, Saqib Mah­mood, Matthew Potts, Adil Rashid, Phil Salt, Jamie Smith, Ol­ly Stone, Re­ece Top­ley, John Turn­er.

CMC