Mumbai Indians head coach Mahela Jayawardene doesn’t think that the latest injury setback of Jofra Archer will affect his availability for Mumbai Indians in the next IPL season.
Jofra, after struggling with his elbow injury for about a year, has now suffered a stress fracture and has been ruled out of upcoming England’s home season.
When Mumbai Indians bought Jofra Archer in the mega auction earlier this year, they were well aware of the fact that Jofra was not going to be available in IPL 2022 because it would take him a few more months to recover from his elbow injury. But, his availability in 2023 was almost certain.
That was the reason why Mumbai saved a big budget for Jofra even though he was playing no. 161 in the auction list and came up for the bids quite late. Mumbai’s point of view was that they wanted to build a tearaway pace attack for the future and for that, they wanted to buy Jofra at any cost to pair him up with Jasprit Bumrah.
Mumbai was eventually able to buy Jofra when he came up for bids because they had a decent budget in hand, while the other teams had already spent quite a big fraction of their budget by the time Jofra’s name came up.
However, if Jofra gets ruled out of the next IPL as well, it will be a massive blow for Mumbai because they have banked on him a lot and have constructed their squad keeping in mind that he will be unavailable for only one season.
We are hoping Jofra Archer gets fit by the next IPL season: Jayawardene
According to Mahela Jayawardene, who was addressing the press ahead of Mumbai’s last game of IPL 2022, Mumbai’s medical experts will keep a keen eye on Jofra’s fitness going ahead in future.
The next IPL is 10 months away and there is enough time for Jofra to recover from the stress fracture he has suffered in his lower back. Jayawardene insisted that because of a long timeframe, it can’t be concluded at this stage that Jofra will certainly be unavailable next season too.
