Ben Duckett opens up on the infamous incident he shared with James Anderson that got him suspended during the Ashes 2017-18 in Australia.
Ben Duckett opened up on the infamous incident he shared with James Anderson that got him suspended during the 2017-18 Ashes in Australia.
Duckett revealed that it was Anderson who had first thrown a drink at him. That had prompted Duckett to have a go at the veteran pacer. It was during the early days of Duckett’s international career when he had only four Test caps and was trying to make a mark.
This incident occurred before the third Test at Avenue Bar in Perth. Given that England had lost both their matches in the series at that point, there was more scrutiny and criticism of the England players. This incident triggered the ECB to impose harsh regulations, including a midnight curfew.
"It's a fairly trivial incident but, in the current climate, it's just not acceptable," Trevor Bayliss, then the head coach of the side, told the press. Anderson understated the issue by calling it a “silly incident” in his column in The Telegraph. Seven years after the incident, Duckett has raised the lid on the incident.
People didn't really want to hear me: Duckett
On The Final Word podcast, Duckett said, "Jimmy actually threw a drink on me, but no one knows about that. And then said, 'oh, we're just messing around. You can just lob one on my head. That's fine.' Genuinely. So then I just poured one on his head and the security guard saw me from the ECB, who looks after us, and it filtered back.”
"That was kind of basically the story. We carried on the rest of the night together, getting on well. That's the story that's got blown up. Then obviously when things start getting out in the media and everyone's saying all this stuff, then everyone believes that.
"But then, you can't really come out and say what I've just said because I'm a young lad trying to break into the England team. It's one of the best ever England players, you know? And people didn't really want to hear me. It was actually a really, really tough time. People look back and it's probably funny and stuff like that. But when you're in Australia and you're kind of being told you can't go to training, you can't play – it's a lonely place for a 22-year-old.”
Duckett re-established himself as an England player under captain Ben Stokes and head coach Brendon McCullum in 2022 after going nearly six years without getting a game. Since his comeback, he has scored 1,980 runs at an average of 45 and a strike rate of 89 in 47 Test innings.
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