Mitchell Johnson: Jofra Archer’s 2019 highlights won’t count for much in the Ashes when consistency matters

Everyone in England likes to remember what happened at Lord’s in 2019 when Jofra Archer floored Steve Smith during their famous battle.

Archer struck Smith with a thunderbolt, then in the second innings greeted Smith’s concussion sub, Marnus Labuschagne, with another missile that hit him on the helmet grille on the second ball he faced. Welcome to Test cricket. But it didn’t faze Marnus. It locked him in.

That’s the thing about the best players: they don’t back away from the contest; they use it to sharpen their edge.

As Smith likes to remind everyone when it comes up, Archer might have forced him out of that match with concussion, but he still didn’t claim his wicket.

But those Lord’s moments have become the whole story for some England fans and media. They’re still living off it.

Since that match, Archer’s debut more than six years ago, he has barely played Test cricket - 14 more games in fact and just two Tests in the past four years. The way he is spoken about it sounds like he’s played a hundred.

Archer been out of the game for a long time with injuries, and while his highlight reel looks great, consistency is what matters in Test cricket.

The now 30-year-old will be desperate to prove himself again come the first Test in Perth. And his pace partner Mark Wood’s in the same boat. Both are quick, both are fragile, and both bring that spark England will need if they want to win here.

I’ve written previously about how Australia’s summer will once again hinge on their world-class bowling attack, but the same applies to England. Their Ashes hopes rest on whether Wood and Archer can stay fit, stay fast, and stay relentless across five brutal Tests in Australian conditions.

The Australian top order won’t be fearful of the Wood-Archer combination. Respectful, yes, but not afraid. There’ll be a few batters in the Aussie line-up who know they’ll be in the firing line, though. Wood will go short, that will be part of his job. Archer, too.

I’ve always liked the way Wood goes about it. Even when I was playing against him, you couldn’t help but respect the way he charged in. He’s fast, skiddy, and wholehearted. The sort of bowler every team wants in their XI because you know he’ll give everything.

He’s got genuine pace and a big heart, and that’s why he’s dangerous. But for England to make a real impact, they’ll need more than just those two.

Bowling in partnerships is everything in Test cricket. Mitchell Starc swings it full and attacks. Josh Hazlewood hits that relentless length with bounce. Scott Boland operates stump to stump, moving it just enough to give you no breathing space.

They complement each other. They know their roles. That’s why the Australian attack works. England need that same balance, not just flashes of pace, but sustained pressure and understanding.

If I was England, I’d want Wood and Archer to play every Test match. They’re the strike pair, the ones who can potentially rattle Australia.

But I don’t see that happening. The risk of injury is high, and there’s murmurs of rotation. Maybe it’s smart management, but if you want to win in Australia, you need your best and quickest bowlers on the park, every match. It’s the Ashes, there’s no room for half measures.

The conditions here will test them in every way. Bowling fast in England is one thing; bowling fast in Australia is something else entirely. The lengths are different. What’s a good ball at Lord’s isn’t a good ball here. You have to push it fuller to get movement but still hit that hard length to extract bounce. It takes time to adjust, and some never do. There’s less swing here, too.

Then there’s the physical toll. The heat. The hard pitches. The sheer grind. Ask any fast bowler who’s played a Test summer here, it gets you.

I remember my own cramps at the Gabba, and Hazlewood’s debut when he seized up under that heavy Brisbane humidity. The body gets belted from all angles. You run in on a soft grass surface, then hammer down onto a rock-hard pitch, ball after ball, spell after spell, day after day. Do that over five Tests and you find out what you’re really made of.

Backing up the next morning after bowling in 40C heat at Optus Stadium or facing that dry desert breeze at Adelaide Oval, that’s when the body screams at you. It’s a different kind of battle, and one that will test Wood and Archer’s durability as much as their pace.

Add in the inexperience around them in Aussie conditions, Matthew Potts, Brydon Carse, Josh Tongue and Gus Atkinson, and it’s an uncertain unit. Maybe England will rotate through them, but that comes with its own risk: you lose rhythm, chemistry, and the intimidation factor that comes with sustained hostility.

For the sake of Test cricket and the spectacle of the Ashes, we need these kinds of battles. We need the fast bowlers to be fit, firing, and frightening.

History shows what makes a great pace attack: relentlessness. No rest, no easy overs. The great West Indies teams never rotated their quicks for a breather, it was one after the other - hostile, skilled, and unapologetically brutal.

That’s what England need if they want to shake Australia. But it can’t just be a cameo. It has to be sustained across the series. If Wood and Archer manage that, then sure, they’ll make life uncomfortable for Australia’s middle order and tail.

The truth is, for the sake of Test cricket and the spectacle of the Ashes, we need these kinds of battles. We need the fast bowlers to be fit, firing, and frightening.

Australia will want that too. They’ll want to beat England at full strength, with their best on the field. That’s what brings out the best in the Aussies, the contest, the theatre, the edge.

If Wood and Archer can stay on the park, we might just get the kind of old-school Ashes battle we all crave, fast bowlers running in hard, batters digging deep, and every ball feeling like a moment that could swing the series.