‘How I play doesn’t really change’: Duckett’s rapid Test to T20 transition

Ten days after the dizzying conclusion of England’s wafer-thin Test defeat in New Zealand and Ben Duckett’s head is still spinning. Within hours he was heading for a brief holiday in Dubai, this Tuesday he arrived in Bangladesh, on Wednesday he had his first and only session in the nets and on Thursday he played a T20 international.

Given that he had been “on a sun lounger a couple of days ago”, Duckett might have been excused a little lack of focus but there was no sign of his mind being somewhere else until he played across one that kept low. “I tried to stick to my strengths. It went all right and then I missed one,” he surmised.

The transition between formats is perhaps more straightforward now, after the well-publicised changes to the Test team over the last year, and all the more so for Duckett given his busy, sweep-heavy style.

“The one thing I’ve been lucky with is because of how I play it doesn’t really change throughout the formats,” he said. “You see these guys who are whacking the ball out of the ground and then they’ve got to go and play Test cricket and it’s a massive difference, where my mentality in all three formats is to see ball, hit ball. And now against spin, sweeping it both ways in all formats – and I’ve got the full backing from all of the squads.”

This series returns Duckett to the site of his international debut seven years ago. He played seven times for England in 2016, breaking into the ODI side in Dhaka, where the final two games of this series will be played, and continuing with a first Test in Chattogram, where England lost the opener on Thursday. Just one more appearance followed before he burst back on the international scene last autumn. Since then he has played eight T20s, five Tests