The Northamptonshire left-handed opener rose up the England ranks with some heavy scoring in the England domestic circuit. Being the first player to land the two most prestigious awards – both PCA (Professional Cricketer’s Award) Player of the Year and Young Player of the Year in the same season in 2016. Duckett amassed 2,706 runs across all formats in a single season with two daddy double hundreds, against Sussex and Kent respectively. He also scored his maiden List A double century, a massive 220 against Sri Lanka A at Canterbury.
Duckett’s emergence though was far from seamless. His fitness issues kept cropping up time and again. Having being dropped from the England U-19 side in 2013, he was left out of the 2015 pre-season tour to Barbados for the very same reason as well. It was David Ripley, the then Northants coach who turned around Duckett’s fortunes. A predominantly middle-order basher, Duckett’s career seemed to be going nowhere until he was asked to open. 1,000 runs in the Championship followed and the southpaw had risen from the Ashes. His maiden ODI tour to Bangladesh was promising but that was followed by a tough time in Tests in India where his footwork against spin was exposed. He did not play in the rest of the series but Ben Duckett remains to be one to watch out for in the near future.