Duckett told the Telegraph<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019ve spent a lot of time away from home in different places, and it felt like the best thing for me to do to be ready to play for England is to be here right now, at home, refreshing my mind and body.<\/p>\n\u201cMore importantly, play some four-day cricket for Notts, and try to find that form I had last summer. My journey into the Test team has come from county cricket.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under IPL rules, players who are signed at the auction and then withdraw for reasons other than an injury are barred from playing in the tournament for three seasons. Duckett follows Harry Brook, who similarly signed for Delhi in 2025 before pulling out to prioritise his England career.<\/p>\n
Bruised by the recent Ashes defeat, but having stuck by Brendon McCullum as head coach, England are now under pressure to refresh the side. But it may be that Duckett\u2019s opening partner, Zak Crawley, is the likelier of the two to make way for a newcomer after failing to justify an extended run.<\/p>\n
While Duckett\u2019s scores were well below par in Australia \u2013 he struggled against Mitchell Starc in particular \u2013 he has done well overall since his return to the Test team in 2022, averaging 42 with six centuries.<\/p>\n
Duckett does, however, have some ground to claw back after a video of him drunk on a night out during the team\u2019s mid-tour break in Noosa was published on social media before the Boxing Day Test.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cI am sorry for that incident, it was not professional and shouldn\u2019t have happened. There is no hiding away from it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Professionalism was only one part of England\u2019s review into the Ashes, with Rob Key, team director, also indicating a desire to reconnect with the first-class counties on selection and scheduling a meeting of cricket directors this week.<\/p>\n
Jonny Bairstow, dropped after winning his 100th cap in early 2024, is one of many keen to see what this looks like in practice. Speaking at Yorkshire\u2019s pre-season media day on Tuesday, Bairstow said: \u201cWhen you say connection, the question you would ask is why have they disconnected in the first place?<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you are trying to rebuild something, you are admitting you have done something wrong previously. The proof is in the pudding, so we will wait and see. I look forward to hearing a bit more about the review.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have got to give people chances. There are a lot of gifted county players.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben Duckett has pulled out of the upcoming Indian Premier League and now faces a three-year ban from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":561572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-561571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=561571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/561572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}