Ben Duckett: I’d be lying if I said I didn’t look at players’ records when they get picked for England

Ben Duckett first played for England as a 21-year-old in 2016. Six years down the line, he has now gone three years without an international appearance despite maintaining his reputation as one of the most consistent all-format batters in the country.

2021 was another good, if not spectacular, year for Duckett. He finished The Hundred as the competition’s second-highest run-scorer and averaged a shade under 40 batting at three for Nottinghamshire in their push for the County Championship title. Not quite the numbers that saw him earn those England honours as a youngster, but still very handy.

A productive summer was followed by a busy winter that saw Duckett compete in the BBL and PSL, spending three months away from home in bubble situations of varying rigidity. While life back home became increasingly ‘normal’ through those months, the environment hasn’t really changed for cricketers travelling abroad.

Duckett became one of a number of English players who either opted out of tournaments or departed early to prioritise their wellbeing when he left the PSL earlier this year. “From an outsider’s perspective, people can struggle to believe that we’re not enjoying ourselves,” Ben Duckett tells Wisden.com.

“I remember speaking to Joe Clarke last winter and he told me that it was tough and that he was looking forward to coming home. I just didn’t get it. You’re staying in nice hotels, playing the game you love, what can be so bad about that? I’ve witnessed that this year and lots of people have. The toughest thing is that it can be very lonely, especially as an overseas player.

“If you’re not scoring runs, your heads going crazy in that hotel room and you’re thinking that you need to change things. In the English summer, you get away, you see mates, you see family, you play golf and you clear your mind, and then you go back the next day and you start again.

“It was a tough stint, and doing Australia and the PSL is basically three months flat-out, and it just got to me in the end.”

After losing his place in the Quetta Gladiators side, Duckett made the decision to return home. “I got 47 [off 32 balls] in my second last innings and we had J-Roy [Jason Roy] and Vincey [James Vince] come in the side and that just shows how tough it is.

“I remember being in my room in Pakistan and thinking about the long summer ahead of me, and decided I needed a few weeks to refresh and get a little bit of time away from the game… I think I’d have been so burnt out before I’d even faced a ball of the county season.

“There are perks of playing in these competitions around the world, but it’s definitely not as luxurious as it may seem from the outside.”

Duckett wants his comments – which came before the news that Roy would be taking a break from the game after almost two years of near-continuous bubble life – to be appreciated by supporters.

“I’ve had one winter of it. I have a lot of sympathy for those guys, especially the England squad, who have been doing it for the last two years flat out. The sacrifices you make, not seeing your family and friends, I can certainly relate to it a bit more if guys pull out of competitions now.

“It is very important for fans on the outside to understand that. It’s not a selfish decision. It’s very tough to be doing that and playing 12 months of the year.”

The upcoming summer has the potential to be pivotal for Duckett, who is in the rare, but not unique, position of a being a batter lurking around the edges of the England set-up in all three formats. Of the 20 leading run-scorers in The Hundred, only Duckett, James Vince, Dawid Malan, Harry Brook and Alex Davies averaged more than 35 in the 2021 County Championship.

After heavy run-scoring for Northants earned Duckett his first England call-up – he had scored 10 first-class hundreds before his 22nd birthday – the punchy left-hander has enjoyed a quiet resurgence after a difficult 2018 campaign. Since the start of 2019, Duckett averages almost exactly 40 in first-class cricket.

Has he done much to change his game?

“I moved around that time to Notts,” he explains. “Purely the reason for it was that I didn’t feel my game was getting any better at Northants. I loved the club, I loved playing there, but we didn’t really have many coaches at the time, so that was why I moved to be under Peter Moores.

“Those quiet winters at home, they were actually the best winters for my game. I worked for hours and hours on my batting. I changed my whole technique to help me in red-ball cricket and to make my leg-side game stronger. It allowed me to leave the ball more outside off-stump and let the bowlers bowl to me.

“I did a lot of work with Ant Botha, and I put so many hours in working on my game.”

It is interesting that given the failings of England’s top-order that Duckett’s name hasn’t really popped up in selection discussions. Recently, Wisden.com published a piece that looked at which batters in England possessed the highest non-Test first-class batting averages. Everyone to feature – other than Duckett – has either played for England in the past 12 months or has had their name feature prominently in the conversation.

I put it to Duckett that he might be harshly judged over his four-Test career, which took place entirely in Asia, In the last two of those Tests, he came unstuck against one of the game’s all-time great spinners in Ravichandran Ashwin, and Duckett hasn’t been in a Test squad since.

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t look at players’ records when they get picked,” he says. “A lot of players in the last few years have had significantly lower numbers than what I’ve produced over my career. So, in that sense, potentially.

“Then again, I have learned, I’ve grown up, and maybe the reason those numbers are consistent and good is because I’ve not let anything affect me on the outside. Now, and over the last 12 to 18 months, I’ve just really enjoyed my move to Notts and winning games of cricket there.

“Last year felt the best my red-ball game has been and I think I averaged 37, scored 700 runs, but we only batted once in half of those games. I don’t know how much that is looked into. I think people just look at numbers and they don’t look at how most games at Trent Bridge were over on the morning of day three. I don’t know how much that’s looked into.

“Three years ago, our collective batting unit, when we couldn’t win a game, was too scared to play on pitches like this. Last year, for the likes of Has [Haseeb Hameed], [Ben] Slater, Clarkey [Clarke], me, we’ve agreed that we’re happy to average 35 for Notts, as long as we win games.”

With the domestic schedule the way it is, players like Duckett who earn contracts in The Hundred do not get the opportunity to play in the Royal London One Day Cup. Duckett last played a 50-over game exactly one week after his most recent England appearance, a T20I against Pakistan in May 2019, an interesting statistic given that 50-over cricket is potentially his best route back into international cricket.

Back in 2016, Ben Duckett scored two fifties in three ODIs in Bangladesh and earlier that year, compiled the 11th highest List A score of all time for England Lions against Sri Lanka ‘A’. Does that play on his mind at all?

“I’m fortunate that I’m batting No. 3 for Nottinghamshire and I was batting No. 3 last year for Welsh Fire. There are players who are very good 50-over cricketers who don’t necessarily get into those franchise teams.

“If I were one of them I’d be frustrated about it, but I’m in one of the best white-ball sides in the country and playing in The Hundred. I see English cricket picking their players from that.

“The way that the England team play is a different level. It’s not scoring 90 off 115 in a 50-over game. For someone like me, whose strike-rate is not necessarily ridiculous, The Hundred and T20 Blast is only going to help that and improve me. But it’s a bit of a shame that I might not play another 50-over again. I’m completely for The Hundred, so I’d much rather play in that competition and sacrifice the Royal London One-Day Cup.”

At 27, there is still plenty of time for Duckett to force his way back into the England side in any format. But given the recent fortunes of the Test side – and specifically the batters – Duckett is aware of the opportunity that this summer may bring.

“I see this summer as a huge summer for that and for a lot of guys in a similar bracket to myself, with the Test side [where it is] at the minute,” he adds.

“One thing I’ve always said over the last few years is that I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself in red-ball cricket. If I’m enjoying the game, not getting too frustrated when I get out and staying fairly level-headed, that’s when I’m at my best in red-ball cricket.

“I don’t want to think too much about what’s going on, but I’m also not silly enough to know that in the next couple of years, if people put scores on the board and score a lot of runs in red-ball cricket, there will be spots available.”