It was an agonising, and a few would say foolhardy, solution to miss out on a maiden Ashes Test century but Ben Duckett appeared completely at peace along with his rash dismissal on 98 in the course of England’s 45-minute barmy Bazball blitz at Lord’s.
After being bounced out by Josh Hazlewood, going for the boundary that will have introduced up his three figures, the opener who simply can not seem to depart alone something remotely hittable shrugged he had no regrets about being caught at deep high quality leg.
“It’s a shot I play and a shot I’ve scored plenty of runs with in my career. I would have been gutted with myself if I’d gone away from it, gone into my shell and gloved one behind,” stated the left-hander.
“Ten metres either side and I’ve got a hundred. Falling so close to three figures here at Lord’s, I was obviously gutted for half-an-hour after, but I’m happy with how I played. I thought it was certainly my best innings in an England shirt.
“It’s the way in which we play our cricket. If they’ve plans like that and we go into our shell, it could be completely towards what we do. We misplaced a few wickets however we’re in a great place.”
It’s true England ended the day in a decent spot at 4-278 in response to Australia’s 416, but Duckett, Ollie Pope and Joe Root getting suckered by the short-ball left some former home greats growling again – for the second day running after Wednesday’s insipid bowling performance.
“What got here for the following hour or so was absolute stupidity,” boomed former England captain Michael Vaughan on the BBC as he panned the fairly headless spell that followed England having moved effortlessly to 1-188.
“That shouldn’t be entertaining, I’m sorry, that’s silly Test match cricket and Australia will likely be delighted with that methodology as a result of when the ball shouldn’t be swinging over the following few weeks, guess what they’ll do?”
But Duckett offered a sterling defence of his own approach, where every ball is a scoring opportunity and the idea of leaving a ball outside off stump is simply anathema.
“Maybe three years in the past, I used to be considering that I may by no means be an opener in Test cricket due to how I play after which truly final summer season I used to be like ‘why not?'” he mused.
“Why do I’ve to bat like Sir Alastair Cook or these nice openers of the previous? I had that backing from (captain Ben) Stokes and Baz (coach Brendon McCullum) to go play how I play.
“The only reason I’m not surprised is because I’ve changed nothing from how I play county cricket to this.”
He even had fun as he urged in mock horror that he might have truly left alone two balls in his 134-ball knock.
“I was gutted actually – I think it was two,” he grinned.
“One of them should have been a wide and the other one was probably over my head. So I was gutted.”
Source: www.perthnow.com.au
