Ben Duckett dazzles as spirit animal of Bazball with flash of light amid gloom | Barney Ronay

Opener may have chucked away his wicket but he is such a natural attacking batter and illuminated a grey day

Perhaps the strangest part of Ben Duckett’s dismissal was how long it seemed to take, the ball falling very slowly out of the grey Oval sky. Duckett was closing in on a century and playing like a man who has just cleaned out the casino at Monte Carlo, playing like a kind of vengeful goblin-god, a cricketer completely in charge of space, time, angles, the face of his bat.

He had made 86 of England’s 140 for one at 5.35 runs an over. Milan Rathnayake was bowling from the Vauxhall End, rolling out something that is probably best described as right-arm moderate. Duckett had played a couple of dot balls. Tiring of this, he pirouetted away from the next one, fell backwards, waited, waited some more, then wafted at it, trying to impart some momentum; the whole thing by now a bit like a last slightly woozy game of badminton on the lawn before tea, succeeding only in clothing the ball straight up in the air.

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