Perhaps the strangest part of Ben Duckett’s dismissal was how long it seemed to take, the ball falling very slowly out of the grey Oval sky. Duckett was closing in on a century and playing like a man who has just cleaned out the casino at Monte Carlo, playing like a kind of vengeful goblin-god, a cricketer completely in charge of space, time, angles, the face of his bat.
He had made 86 of England’s 140 for one at 5.35 runs an over. Milan Rathnayake was bowling from the Vauxhall End, rolling out something that is probably best described as right-arm moderate. Duckett had played a couple of dot balls. Tiring of this, he pirouetted away from the next one, fell backwards, waited, waited some more, then wafted at it, trying to impart some momentum; the whole thing by now a bit like a last slightly woozy game of badminton on the lawn before tea, succeeding only in clothing the ball straight up in the air.
Duckett was already up and turning to walk off as it was caught by Dinesh Chandimal. But it seemed fitting that there was time, as the ball hung in the September gloom, to contemplate what the point of all this really is, to think about the batting superego that tells you wickets are sacred, that this is a place of sacrifice not indulgence, to consider the basic paradox of Duckett’s knock.
Because on the face of it this was one of the most vigorous, creative, uplifting opener’s innings you’re likely to see in Tests in England. It should be added that Duckett was aided in this by Sri Lanka’s seamers adopting two separate modes of attack, wide and short, sometimes expertly combining the two.
At the same time Duckett also very obviously chucked away his wicket. Poor execution is the mantra with this England team, not poor selection. This is how I score. Back your talent. Be where your feet are. Find your neutral space. Put a lid on the squid. Eat some pizza. Do what it takes.
Still, though. In the pre-enlightenment days Duckett would have walked up the Oval steps to shrugs, raised eyebrows, the promise of a stern talk. And this was a moment that sits right on the line the Stokes-McCullum approach looks to challenge, in a sport of hard orthodoxies and a certain self-flagellation when it comes to numbers.
Had Duckett scored 14 more runs we might have been talking about one of the most memorable modern innings played here. An 86 made this look like an indulgence, a failure, a chance missed. Towards the end of play the loudest cheer of the day would come for the stroke that took Ollie Pope from 99 to 103, two digits to three, the great dividing line.
And yet for those who were there Duckett’s innings will remain a flash of colour in an otherwise grey day. It was thrilling early on watching him face up to Asitha Fernando, at 5ft 6in bowling to 5ft 7in, surely one the most compact new-ball matchups in Test history.
Duckett must be infuriating to bowl to. We know about the non-leaving stats. But he has such perfect control of his bat face outside off stump that this comes from a strength, the ability to run and glide and work the ball into those spaces around point.
The question already being asked is, can he score runs in Australia like this, because everything must be measured against what might happen in Australia, even though the thing that happens in Australia is always pretty much the same.
The obvious tactic on bouncier pitches will be to feed that habit, to put fielders in place, to trust that extra pace and accuracy will turn that reflexive strength into a serial weakness.
They did a bit of this during the Ashes in England. So did the West Indies this summer. Since Lord’s last year Duckett averages 33 in Tests.
Does that number matter? He is such a natural attacking opener for this England era. In Jonny Bairstow’s absence Duckett is basically the spirit animal of Bazball now, the most obviously invested of the senior players.
This is a cricketer having the time of his life, completely caught up not just in issues of batting tempo, but in the optics, the attitude, the verbiage, the bro-chat, the beard, shades, the yeah- whatever balcony vibes. You feel that if he could Duckett would live quite happily in Ben Stokes’s top pocket like a devoted cartoon mouse companion.
More to the point, his sense of adventure is a team game. His quick scoring here couldn’t do anything for Dan Lawrence. But Duckett’s aggression helped bed Pope into a hugely significant day in his own summer, easing the tension in those fidgety feet.
The dismissal was an ugly flap, one that will draw some sighs. But sport is in the end a matter of moments. On a day when the autumn of red-ball cricket in England has perhaps never felt quite so specifically September- ish, this was a rare note of colour and light.
