All eyes will be on us, says Jofra

International cricket will resume with England taking on the West Indies at home for a three-match Test series. The Caribbean players are already in England and played a warm-up match yesterday at Old Trafford. Cricket fans all over the world will be waiting anxiously for the first match to get underway on July 8th.

"It's exciting that England and West Indies will be the teams to start world cricket back up again, laying down the platform for other countries to follow," England paceman Jofra Archer wrote in his column for the Daily Mail.

Australia's Test captain Tim Paine said that he will be keenly watching the upcoming Test series between England and West Indies.

"I am fascinated like anyone is to watch some Test cricket again and to see exactly how the West Indies and England series is going to work and the different things that they are going to be doing that haven't been done before in cricket," Paine told reporters via Zoom as per cricket.com.au.

"I think it is going to be interesting and certainly for me and Justin (Langer) and the Australian international players it's something we are going to watch very closely," he added.

For England paceman Archer it will be an exciting series too as he will be playing against his native country for the first times. Archer was born in Barbados but decided to play international cricket for England, as his father is English.

Writing about the upcoming series, the young paceman said he expects a lot of people to tune in to the match as live sports is returning after long.

"Obviously as the only cricket on, all eyes will be on it, and I expect that there will be a lot more television viewers than would have been the case had things been normal.

"I expect people who don't usually watch cricket will tune in — because it's live sport, not pre-recorded. If they are like me they will have had their fill of re-runs," he added.

Earlier, West Indies pacer Kemar Roach, who played with Archer when they were growing up, said there would be friendships on the field. Archer though said that the comments shouldn't be blown out of proportion.

"Jofra made his decision and he's done a fantastic job for England so far but there will be no friendships during this series," Roach had said last week.

Archer said: "Let's not get this out of proportion. There will be rivalry there but when Kemar said there will be 'no friendships' it sounds a lot worse than it actually is."

"Obviously, we all grew up in the Caribbean and it's customary for us to say 'we will be friends at the end of the game'.

"That's exactly what he meant. It's not as though he is going to walk past me or be rude, it's just that when we are on the field we will play hard cricket."