Jofra
Archer to travel with England Lions to UAE as part of injury comeback
Jofra Archer will
travel with the England Lions squad for training in the United Arab Emirates
next month as he continues to recover from injury.
Bowler Archer, 27, has not played for England
since March 2021 because of back and elbow injuries.
Haseeb Hameed, Dan Lawrence and 18-year-old
leg-spinner Rehan Ahmed are in the 15-strong Lions squad.
They will tour between 6 and 27 November and
support the men's Test squad before their visit to Pakistan.
The senior side will travel to the UAE on 18
November and play a three-day practice match against the Lions from 23 November
before the first Test a week later.
Test players James Anderson, Jamie Overton,
Ollie Robinson, Jack Leach and Will Jacks will head out early to train with the
Lions.
Archer is one of three fast bowlers, along
with Saqib Mahmood and Brydon Carse, who are touring as part of their
rehabilitation from injury.
Since his last appearance, Archer - who has 86
international wickets in 13 Tests, 17 one-day internationals and 12 Twenty20s -
has had two operations on an elbow issue and suffered a stress fracture of the
lower back.
Bowlers Matthew Potts and Matthew Fisher are
the other capped players in an inexperienced Lions squad which also features
Surrey wicketkeeper Jamie Smith, Sussex opener Tom Haines and Essex seamer Sam
Cook.
Hameed last played for England in their Ashes
defeat in Australia last winter while Lawrence has not featured since the tour
to the Caribbean in March.
Highly-rated Ahmed has not been capped at
international level but starred in England's run to the Under-19 World Cup
final earlier this year and last month took his maiden first-class five-wicket
haul and hit his first Test century in the same match for Leicestershire
against Derbyshire.
England Lions training
group: Tom Abell
(Somerset), Rehan Ahmed (Leicestershire), Josh Bohannon (Lancashire), Jack
Carson (Sussex), Sam Conners (Derbyshire), Sam Cook (Essex), Matthew Fisher
(Yorkshire), Haseeb Hameed (Nottinghamshire), Tom Haines (Sussex), Jack Haynes
(Worcestershire), Lyndon James (Nottinghamshire), Dan Lawrence (Essex), Liam
Patterson-White (Nottinghamshire), Matthew Potts (Durham), Jamie Smith (Surrey)
