CHENNAI: In the winter of 2016, in Ben Duckett's first year as an international cricketer, the batter had an Indian problem. R Ashwin had him on toast, normal Indian pitches had his number and he was dropped midway after averaging six across three innings, two Tests and 57 largely torturous minutes.
In the summer of 2025, India has a Duckett problem. He has generally had no problems in dealing with the threat of Jasprit Bumrah. The pacer averages 23.9 and strikes at 43.88 when bowling to openers in Tests. Against the southpaw from England, he strikes once every 85 deliveries and averages 55 with the ball.
In the larger scheme of things, this may be a footnote but it's representative of how Duckett has gone from end of the batting spectrum to another. In 2016, he was a walking wicket against India. Now? He's the opener the Indian bowlers hate bowling against.
Since the start of 2024, Duckett is the leading run-scorer against India with 554 and averages 46.16 with two 100s (no other player has scored over 500).
But how did the 30-year-old manage to do this?
Here's Ant Botha, who knows Duckett fairly well. At the outset, Botha, the current skills coach at Nottinghamshire, makes one thing clear about his ward. "He has always had unbelievable self belief system," the South African tells this daily over phone. "He was always talented, had great hand-eye co-ordination and very stubborn. That's always been one of his great strengths."
This is what prompted the England management to fast track Duckett into the national team in 2016. After that series in India, though, a trial by spin had seemingly put a halt to his then fledgling career. After a few years, he moved to Notts where Botha was already in situ with Peter Moores, the former England head coach.
Gradually, Duckett, who had won the Professional Cricketers Association's Player of the Year and the Young Player of the Year in 2016, began to make up for lost time. It included lots of video analysis, sweating it out in indoor nets and constantly working on his movement, pre-delivery.
"We did loads of work one winter when he was in England," Botha says. "He would just phone me and say 'let's have a net' and we would just go. A lot of the time, it was about another pair of eyes, video analysis... the big thing for him in those days was about getting his pre delivery movements right. The bat face would close so the leg side was his go to but it also hindered him in certain areas. (Those sessions) it was fun, actually."
The winter in question was 2020 when England had seemingly moved past Duckett. To be fair to the national selectors, he himself had thought his chance had come and gone. But that didn't stop him from 'removing the mask' about his own game. The two coaches at Notts and Duckett had regular conversations about his game and soon enough, the Kent-born batter was okay 'to move his game to vulnerable areas'. Botha explains. "It wasn't ground-breaking or anything," Botha remembers. "It was just evidence-based... this is where we at, you ready to take your game to where you want it to go? And credit to Ben because he really opened up and that allows... it's an in for any coach."
Some of the conversations revolved around Duckett's first innings record at his then new club as well as a tendency to crossover with his feet. "The first thing we sort of worked through was getting his movements in a bit earlier," Botha, originally from Durban, explains. "He had the tendency to crossover a bit with his feet... we kind of stripped it bare. We simplified everything. After a point, he started to find his hands."
This was around the time when he had inadvertently changed his bat grip following an injury. While Botha does mention it, it's not like 'we went to the nets one day to work on his bat grip.' "A lot of coaching is just waiting for the right time to say anything," he says. "I just threw a lot of balls at him, he's a short guy, he wasn't scoring enough runs square of the wicket. His off-side play was not near where he would have liked it to be from a wagon wheel point of view. He wasn't accessing backward point enough."
The closed bat face was a problem. The solution was layered. "We didn't want to get too technical because that's not Ben's game. We just let him find it, we had experimental sessions and over time, he found it. There was no magic wand. It opened up the world on the off side."
As part of the process, there was a push to make him treat the 'bouncer as a friend'. Botha explains. "He's a short guy and so the bouncer can be a friend. You can't get bowled or leg-before. It was a question about getting the balance and fundamentals correct. Now, he's an extremely hard guy to bowl to. Your natural Test match lines and lengths... other batters would normally leave deliveries in 4th or 5th stump line but he has that amazing ability to work in three or four different areas. He's also far better with pulls, hooks and cross bat shots." He also references the stat of him leaving next to nothing. "He's the worst leaver in Test cricket, that's an amazing stat, that."
All of these incremental changes started taking an effort, one by one. Every time Duckett came back to Notts, he would excitedly remark something had changed for the better. "Whenever he came back, there was a massive lightbulb moment," Botha says. "He got excited because of the way he released his bottom hand. He got excited with how he used to open his bat face..."
Doing it in practice away from the media glare is one thing. Doing it in competitive games across a full English summer was a different thing altogether. That's what he had to do to put himself in the national reckoning. It's what he did in 2022. He averaged 72.28 across 14 innings with three 100s and five 50s at a strike rate of over 76. In that same year, England's other Ben, Stokes, and the new head coach, Brendon McCullum, breathed fresh life into a faltering red-ball programme.
Duckett earned a recall and he hasn't looked back since. "It's a pleasure to see him play," Botha says.
For him and the rest of the cricketing world.
