Ben Duckett

An idiosyncratic opener with almost no interesting in leaving the ball, Ben Duckett enjoyed a prolific second coming during England's "Bazball" era. In his first Test appearance in six years, he scored a 105-ball century during a 233-run stand alongside Zak Crawley in Rawalpindi - a sign of things to come for England's newest opening pair.

Duckett quickly became one of the standard-bearers for the aggressive approach favoured by Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum. His first hundred on home soil came against Ireland at Lord's, and he showed his proficiency against the turning ball with 153 off 151 in Rajkot. The following summer, his 149 underpinned victory in the fourth innings against India at Headingley - England's second-highest successful chase fired by Duckett and Crawley putting on 188 in 42.2 overs.

He returned to contention in the white-ball formats as well, scoring a maiden ODI hundred almost seven years on from his debut. At the 2025 Champions Trophy, he notched 165 off 143 balls against Australia in Lahore, only for England to lose on their way to an ignominious exit from the tournament.

Duckett's rehabilitation after a tough baptism in international cricket - four Tests and three ODIs in Bangladesh and India in 2016 - came via a move to Nottinghamshire. He scored 1012 runs at 72.28 as Notts won promotion as Division Two champions in 2022, and subsequently returned to the England fold in better physical shape and with greater certainty in his methods.

He had emerged at Northamptonshire as an exciting but untamed talent, picked to tour the subcontinent after career-best performances in all three formats - including the sixth-highest first-class score for Northamptonshire, a one-day double-hundred for England Lions, and a starring role on Blast Finals Day.

In July of 2016, Duckett scored 650 List A runs at an average of 130.00, a run which included scores of 163 not out and 220 not out, the latter a record, for the Lions. He had begun the season by scoring 282 not out in the Championship against Sussex - it could have been bigger were it not for the washout of the last two days - and he went on to gain further plaudits with a thrilling 84 in the Blast semi-final as Northamptonshire again claimed the trophy. He scored 2706 runs in all formats, the highest tally since Marcus Trescothick's 2934 in 2009. As Wisden remarked in making him a Cricketer of the Year: "He batted with panache, impish ingenuity, confidence and courage - all before turning 22."

He started strongly, with two ODI half-centuries in Bangladesh, but his first England winter turned sour after a technical glitch was mercilessly targeted by the India spinner R Ashwin, who exploited a tendency to sit back in the crease on leg stump and play with half a bat away from his pads. He was dropped two Tests into a 4-0 series defeat.

The perception that Duckett was something of a loose cannon was unavoidable after he intruded into the narrative of England's 2017-18 Ashes tour in less-than-helpful fashion. Duckett, touring with England Lions, found himself headline news when he threw beer over James Anderson in a Perth bar. Duckett was fined and suspended from the rest of the tour and needed to rebuild trust before England took another look.

He moved to Notts after the 2018 season, but the lowlight of a lean first year was the T20 Blast semi-final against Worcestershire, in which Duckett ended 49 not out in a dramatic one-run loss. During the Covid-19 lockdown at the start of the 2020 summer, Duckett decided it was time to shed some weight, and looked like a different man when called up to England's white-ball bubble. He did not ultimately win a place in the side, but made two Bob Willis Trophy hundreds and struck the winning runs on Finals Day as a further reminder of his ability.

Duckett, a wicketkeeper-batter and product of Stowe School, quickly made strides at Northants where he had been part of the youth set-up since 11 years old. He won a first-team debut at 17 and soon made a maiden fifty against Leicestershire. He then received an unexpected summons to the Northants side as they won the T20 trophy against Surrey at Edgbaston because of an injury sustained by Kyle Coetzer in the semi-final earlier in the day. A few months later, he was dropped by England Under-19s for failing a fitness test and admitted that "complacency" had crept in.

His success in the World Cup was proof of his positive response, becoming one of only two England players - Alastair Cook being the other - to have averaged more than 60 in the tournament. He also collected Man-of-the-Match awards with 61 against India in the quarter-final and a century as England beat Australia by one-wicket in the third-place play-off.

His commitment was further questioned, though, when he was omitted from Northants' pre-season tour of Barbados in 2015 as his fitness levels again fell below expected standards. He was chastened that summer by a drink-driving ban but responded in the next week by helping Northants through to the quarter-final of the Blast.

He scored heavily in the Championship, too, after Northants' coach David Ripley asked him to open the batting - quite a gamble considering his reputation as an indisciplined middle-order dasher. It began an eye-catching run of form which brought four Championship hundreds in his last eight innings of 2015.
ESPNcricinfo staff