![]() ![]() Jones declared himself fit for the start of the 1968 season, but in early June the injury flared up again. I told John Snow and he said just to rest it until the start of our season and it would be OK. “I went to throw it in under-arm,” he said, many years later. He ended the fifth Test against West Indies in March 1968 a hero, his unbeaten 12-ball innings of nought at No 11 helping his side to the draw that sealed a 1-0 series victory.īut it was this game that changed his career in all the wrong ways – and all he did was throw a ball. ![]() Archer has played 13 Tests and taken 42 wickets, two fewer on both counts than the number Jones had reached when the wheels came off. It is here that we hope the pair’s stories diverge, because for Jones the injury issues continued until it became obvious that his career would end before they did. For Jones was – a familiar story, this – a brilliant fast bowler whose career was derailed in his mid-20s by an injury to the elbow of his bowling arm that simply would not stop hurting, and spent two years embarking on a succession of aborted comebacks, every one breathlessly reported in the nation’s media. It is increasingly hard not to not to think of Jones when the latest Archer newsflash pops up, and the England bowler jets home from another injury-affected foreign trip. ![]()
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