Archer could be a game-changer

England’s Jofra Archer could smell the terror. Steve Smith, the world’s best batsman, was twitching with electricity. He dabbed at Archer, he ducked at Archer, he even tried to hook Archer. One man had a sling. The other man had a sword. And as we know from our Bible, the sling is mightier than the sword.

Every ball that Archer bowled was a threat. And something primitive in the crowd stirred as they waited to lick over the carcass. The food chain hummed with anticipation. There is nothing quite so thrilling in cricket as the duel between a great fast bowler and a great batsman.

The batsman has his courage, his wits, his brain, his skill, all the things that define him as human. The fast bowler relies more on the animal, on all those physical attributes that make him one of the most dangerous men on the planet.

And for some perverse reason, part of us is willing him to prevail. Part of us urges on the animal.

At the start of the confrontation Smith ferociously drove Archer, 24, still very young for a fast bowler, through extra cover for four. The crowd knew what was coming. Smith knew what was coming. And he still couldn’t get out of the way, taking a savage blow on the forearm.

Nasser Hussain, up in commentary, said of Smith, ‘‘He looks comfortable. He’s shrugged it off already.’’

Really? That’s not what the rest of us were seeing. It’s not what David Warner was seeing, watching the action from the Lord’s balcony with a pair of binoculars. When was the last time you saw a player using binoculars to zoom in on the action.

‘‘Don’t miss this,’’ said David Lloyd, as Smith tried a defiant hook, and top-edged over the wicketkeeper.

Everyone’s brains were now starting to scramble. England appealed for a catch behind and then reviewed the not-out decision. It was a ghost review. The ball was nowhere near the bat. There was no sound, no contact, nothing except what was happening in England’s heads. And they were just the front-row spectators.

Smith refused to back away. He pulled Archer just wide of square leg for four. Archer turned away. He doesn’t snort like a Dennis Lillee. Sometimes there is no more than a contemplative smile. Archer’s not much of a sledger, facially or verbally.

And then he struck. The problem for

Smith was that the ball was only a bit short of a length. It certainly wasn’t bouncer length. And Smith had shuffled across as he does. The ball spat. It was over 150kmh of menace. Smith was felled. He could have taken it on the chest as Brian Close once did of the great West Indian attack, but Smith’s trigger movements brought him down and into the ball.

‘‘Oh dear,’’ said Lloyd, with those long Lancastrian vowels.

But was it really going to end any other way. Smith’s idiosyncratic technique has made him impermeable against the world’s best quicks. Until now. Archer is just that bit quicker and gets that bit more sudden lift, meaning his throat balls come from a length the batsman isn’t expecting.

And now what happens next? Well, what happened immediately next was that Smith was removed from the field. Unbelievably he would return a few overs later. Apparently he passed the concussion test. Apparently he insisted he was OK.

That is an indictment of Australia’s leadership and its medical advisers. The doctors know that 30 per cent of such concussions don’t present obvious symptoms until later.

Coach Justin Langer was once felled himself, spent three days feeling sick and woozy, then returned to the ground, insisted on batting and was banned from doing so by captain Ricky Ponting who said he would sooner forfeit the test match.

Does Langer not remember? Instead Smith’s own garbled testimony was allowed to prevail. He went back out there and batted like a lunatic. Mercifully he was not hit again. That night Smith felt ill and was replaced in the fourth innings by Marnus Labuschagne under the new concussion protocols.

Early in his innings Archer struck Labuschagne a sickening blow on the grill of his helmet. Thank the Lord for such protection because otherwise the ball could have killed him. In this match alone

Archer hit three different Aussies, all batsmen, in the head. So is he the man who will change the rules of cricket?

I have railed before against New Zealand’s disgusting tactic of persistent short-pitched bowling, often at tail-enders. They are not alone. Pat Cummins, in the Lord’s test, bowled a series of short balls at Archer. This was not retaliation. This was first strike.

I get those who support the spectacle. The following was written on the Guardian’s comments page and expresses the view of many: ‘‘The point of fast bowling is that it can be dangerous. Gets into batsmen’s heads and makes them scared.

‘‘May as well ban boxing completely, tackles in football, ice hockey will have to go, American Football would be a massive no-no . . . I mean where do you stop? Noone wants to see a player hurt, but without an element of risk the game loses so much.’’

But it’s still a game. Dr Bennet Omalu, the man who first publicly identified the brain damage endemic in the NFL, said recently, ‘‘In the next generation or two, mankind won’t be playing sports like rugby or football or ice hockey or mixed martial arts. It just doesn’t make sense to be damaging the brain of a human being.’’

It doesn’t make sense to me, it doesn’t make sense to Dr Omalu and it shouldn’t make sense to a society that uses law to enforce the wearing of seatbelts and all sorts of other health and safety considerations. But somehow it makes sense to primitive man.

For all my abhorrence of concussion and the damage it causes to lives and families, I sat watching Archer against Smith with a visceral thrill that made me feel alive. And that’s the contradiction. I listened to Freddie Flintoff on Desert Island Discs the other day, and he spoke of being in a boxing match and his wife turning into a rabid, ranting animal ringside whom he scarcely recognised.

Freddie wondered what on earth he was doing trying to hit the head of another human being and I’m sure his wife thought the same. But sometimes we just can’t help ourselves.