Hanging out with my friend Jofra

It's always funny when you get to interview a close friend. You almost work extra-hard to highlight that special thing that makes them your friend.

For months, Jofra Archer and I had tried to coordinate our schedules to give this video feature the time I felt it deserved.

"How about this Saturday?" I would ask.

"Nah, I have training and then I gotta pack for New Zealand. What about the Sunday?" he would ask.

"Nah, I've gotta go to Liverpool for football," I would reply.

Then the cycle would repeat itself until it was time for him to head to South Africa, where, unfortunately, his tour was cut short when he picked up a stress fracture in his elbow. After that, I knew he was set to head back to see his family in the Caribbean.

"Why don't you guys just come to Barbados?" Jof suggested.

We landed in Barbados on a Thursday, four days before Jof was due to head back to England to continue rehab on his injury.

I felt like I was visiting a close relative - and in a sense, I was.

The only issue we faced was explaining to my English producer just how Caribbean time works. It was only the morning of the shoot that Jof messaged to give us the green light to pop by to his place. My producer had written up a perfectly detailed production plan, times included, prior to the trip. I was certain we wouldn't stick to any of those times, but I wasn't complaining. I was back in my natural habitat, having left behind London and its nine-degree weather with a side of fog and rain.

We set out to get the most important thing for the day, apart from the camera equipment - food. The idea was to have a chat, looking back at the last year with Jof, over a meal with his family. I took orders, which Jof's sister relayed on text message.

"Just waiting for Jofra's order now," she said.

"I bet he's gonna ask for the ribs," I replied.

"Yeah, he said get the ribs and chips, please."

Order almost complete, I realised we were missing one side. I texted Jof to see what he preferred between a side of steamed veggies or coleslaw.

"Veg," he said. "I only like my mom's coleslaw."

Fair enough. After all, moms know everything, right? Well, almost everything, as I soon found out.

We pulled up to Jofra's family home where he paused his intense game of Call of Duty just long enough to greet us amid the flurry of wagging tails of his beloved dogs, Sheba, Sanju and Blu.

"Do I need to put on a shirt?" he asked.

"Nah, not yet," I said. Why bother? We were capturing him in his element, and who wouldn't want to be shirtless on a hot day in the Caribbean?

Once him mum, Joelle, and his step-dad, Patrick, came home, we sat down for the meal while the crew set up. We had a lot to catch up on, considering I hadn't seen the family since the 2019 World Cup final.

Joelle and I reminisced about all the times we met last summer whenever my schedule permitted me to cover an England game during the World Cup.

"I didn't even watch that Super Over live," I said. "I ran behind the screen at Trafalgar Square, but now that I've seen it, he didn't even look nervous."

Jofra raised his brows and almost said "Ha!"

To this day, that's the only sign he has given to indicate that he was even a little bit nervous bowling that Super Over.

Then I realised I wasn't alone in not being able to get inside Jofra's head. His mum explained how throughout the tournament she was trying to get something, anything out of Jof to understand what it was like for him to be living through each situation.

"But you know, he gives you nothing," she said with a laugh.

Don't I know it? Even though I'm a few years older than Jof, I always joke that he's like an older cousin or something. He has been a welcome peace after many storms, whether he's trying to be or not.

I can remember chatting with him during the 2018 IPL. He had a slight injury concern but looked set to take the field again. People wanted to know why the Rajasthan Royals had paid $1.125 million for a player who hadn't played any international cricket. It felt like everyone was watching and Jof had to cope with the pressure of playing in the world's top T20 league.

Jof's response? He asked for my prediction for an upcoming Manchester United match. Calm, cool and collected as ever.

As excited as I was to see everyone in his family again, there was one face I was extra-happy to see - Blu, Jofra's dog, who had made the trip from England to Barbados just a few weeks before our visit. If you haven't noticed by now, Jof is a huge dog lover. That, along with the fact that we both support Manchester United, is how we got chatting in the first place, sending each other dog memes and videos on a daily basis.

Last summer I was looking forward to watching the Ashes live now that I was living in England. That a friend was actually going to be a part of it felt surreal.

Jof had missed the first Test while undergoing treatment for a side strain, but now he was raring to go for the second Test, at Lord's. I made sure I was free to go to the ground on day one. The usual critics had been raising questions about him: sure, he can handle one-day cricket, but can he handle Test cricket?

Day one came and we got rain, rain and more rain. Play was abandoned without a ball being bowled. I went to the mall with Jof's sister. Later that day, we got a text.

"When you guys finishing? I wanna go look about a puppy," Jof said.

Before I knew it, we had all jumped into his car and were headed to this mystery location to "view" this puppy. When we got there and he picked up this grey puppy with the most beautiful blue eyes.

Jof turned to me and asked, "You have plenty work to do this week?" As we got into the car and headed back to London with the puppy in my lap, I wondered how I was going to explain to my dog, Zlatan, about our new house guest.

Over the next couple of days, I managed to make it to Lord's for the cricket, but only until lunch since I had to keep rushing back to take care of my new Godpup (yes, that's a thing.) During those days, a lot happened on the pitch. Jofra made his Test debut, took five wickets in the match, and was involved in that Steve Smith concussion.

Jof was back in the headlines once again, but after becoming the Super-Over hero in the World Cup final, this was just a standard day in the office, right? As a fan and a reporter, I tried to pry for details, but he would answer every question in his chill manner, as if his Test debut were just another match, and then follow up with a request to call around to see little Blu.

"We were supposed to actually just see him," he said while we sat on a beach near his family home, with a now not so little Blu. "But when I got there and I saw him in the litter, it was really hard to not take him with me."

Fair enough, I thought. After all, I was there too and I knew at least one of us was leaving with a puppy, whether we planned to or not! I had learnt the day before that at one point Jof had considered becoming a veterinarian if the whole cricket thing didn't work out. And his mum said he all but enrolled for a course in agriculture in Barbados before he left for the UK to pursue the cricket dream. That other back-up plan would probably have worked out well too.

As we sat under the palm trees on the white sands of a perfect beach a stone's throw away from where he grew up, I noticed a massive rock in the sea in the distance.

"That rock wasn't always in the sea, you know," Jof explained while our camera crew framed the shot for our interview. "It was a part of that cliff, but fell off maybe four or five years ago."

"That's mental. It's massive - it must have felt like an earthquake! I wonder what causes that," I said.

"Soil erosion," Jofra answered.

"Okay, Mr Agriculture!" I replied and we all broke out into laughter.

That's Jofra - multitalented, multidimensional and all wrapped up in the most chilled out exterior. So whether you want tips on playing Call of Duty, or on banking with Natwest or HSBC (I'm speaking from experience here), or maybe you want someone to bowl a crunch over on the way to winning a World Cup, Jofra is your guy. His ability to take even the most mind-blowing moments in stride might just be his best weapon yet.