Ben Duckett sheds light on sordid Ashes incident that involved current bowling coach James Anderson as well.
Ben Duckett has lifted the lid on the incident that saw him sent home from Australia during the 2017-18 Ashes.
After pouring a drink over James Anderson, Duckett was sent home, but not before admitting that Anderson had thrown a drink over him first, feeling horrible, and urging Duckett to do the same.
Desperate to add to his four Test caps from tours of Bangladesh and India at the close of 2016, Duckett was a member of the Lions tour at the time. He was sent home with a fine and suspension from the ECB as a result of his indiscretion. By the end of 2018, he was back in the Lions lineup.
The incident happened at Perth’s Avenue Bar prior to the third Test match against Australia. England was down 2-0 and under close scrutiny for their off-field conduct. Prior to the series, Jonny Bairstow ‘greeted’ Cameron Bancroft at the bar by butting heads, a story that surfaced with erroneously malevolent connotations during the climax of England’s defeat at the Gabba in the first Test match. This incident had already made the venue famous on the tour.
After Ben Stokes was charged with affray in September of that year and found not guilty in 2018, the ECB was already on high alert before travelling to Australia. A midnight curfew that had been imposed after the Bairstow-Bancroft incident was made permanent after Duckett’s misdemeanour proved to be the last straw, but it has subsequently been loosened sporadically.
As an accomplished international seven years later, Duckett feels safe stating that he was not the instigator on that fatal night in Perth and that he believed his England career was finished. Anderson is now retired, but he still serves as a bowling consultant in the Test setup.
“Jimmy actually threw a drink on me, but no one knows about that,” Duckett told The Final Word podcast. “And then said, ‘oh, we’re just messing around. You can just lob one on my head. That’s fine.’ Genuinely. So then I just poured one on his head. The security guard saw me from the ECB, who looks after us, and it filtered back.
“That was kind of basically the story. We carried on the rest of the night together, getting on well. That’s the story that’s got blown up. Then obviously when things start getting out in the media and everyone’s saying all this stuff, then everyone believes that like that. And as soon as a story or a headline’s out there, ‘well that’s what happened then’.
“But then you can’t really come out and say what I’ve just said. Because I’m a young lad trying to break into the England team. It’s one of the best ever England players, you know? And people didn’t really want to hear me.”