Ben Duckett’s fifth Test hundred led the way for England as they ran riot against an undercooked Zimbabwe attack on the first day of the English Test summer at Trent Bridge.
Overall, it was a low-key curtain-raiser for what has the potential to be a blockbuster home summer. The recent good weather made way for gloomy, grey morning skies and several sections of the ground were left unoccupied. None of this deterred Duckett, though, who raced along to his second home Test hundred from exactly 100 balls, putting on 231 for the opening wicket with Zak Crawley.
It was England’s highest opening partnership on home soil in 65 years when Geoff Pullar and Colin Cowdrey amassed 290 for the first wicket against South Africa at Old Trafford. It’s the second time that Crawley and Duckett have put on more than 200 for the first wicket in Test cricket – the other time being in Rawalpindi in 2022. They are the fourth English pairing – alongside Atherton-Gooch, Hobbs-Rhodes and Hobbs-Sutcliffe – to register multiple double-hundred opening stands.
Overall, only eight England opening pairs have more runs in partnership than Duckett and Crawley.
Duckett and Crawley also created history alongside the England No. 3 Ollie Pope. It was the second time that all three scored hundreds in the same innings, a feat never seen before in Test cricket. The trio had previously all scored centuries in the same innings in the aforementioned 2022 Test in Rawalpindi.
Individually, the hundred ticked Duckett’s Test average back above 40, returning him to an elite club of batters – alongside Harry Brook, Virender Sehwag and Adam Gilchrist – who average more than 40 and strike above 80 in Test cricket (with a minimum of 10 Tests).
More generally, since returning to the England set-up in 2022, Duckett averages an impressive 45.09 in Test cricket. Thirty-three Tests into his career, Duckett possesses an eerily similar record to that of another English free-flowing left-handed opener, Marcus Trescothick, at the corresponding point of his Test career.
After 33 Tests, Trescothick had scored 2,315 runs at an average of 40.61 with three centuries and 16 further 50-plus scores. Duckett, who is in the midst of his 33rd Test, currently has 2,400 runs and averages 42.10 with five hundreds and 13 more scores above 50. Duckett has batted 61 times in Test cricket, exactly the same number as Trescothick had after 33 Tests.
The second half of Trescothick’s Test career was far more prolific than his first. 11 of his 14 Test hundreds came in his final 38 Tests. Trescothick was famously a tone-setting opener for one of England’s more successful modern-day sides. Duckett will surely hope that his England side will emulate Trescothick’s in securing a memorable Ashes triumph this year.
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