New Boy Ben Has Made An Immediate Impression

Paul Edwards runs the rule over Notts’ new opening pair, Ben Duckett and Ben Slater, and how they have given head coach Peter Moores plenty of food for thought.

For most professional cricketers, late March is a time for making new starts and forging fresh relationships. Their winter programmes have dealt with fitness and skills but nothing except meaningful match practice can prepare a group of players for the rich rigours of the English season.

And at no county are these precepts more valid this spring than Nottinghamshire, the club which signed four young players late last season and whose squad is now intent on expunging the grisly memories of September’s battle against relegation.

So the gaggle of Trent Bridge diehards who gathered at Fenner’s on Sunday morning were heartened indeed by the assurance with which two of their new recruits, Ben Duckett and Ben Slater, opened their side’s innings against Cambridge MCCU.

While Slater settled into the tempo that should help him anchor Nottinghamshire’s innings this year, Duckett tucked into the Cambridge bowlers, one or two of whom struggled dreadfully against a stiff easterly breeze.

The results were spectacular. The pair had put on 222 in 38 overs by lunch and had eventually extended their stand to 325 before a sated Duckett was bowled for 216 when attempting to slog Callum Guest over Parker’s Piece.

By then, though, the former Northamptonshire opener had hit 34 fours and four sixes. He had offered many illustrations of a talent which has demoralised better bowlers than that which Cambridge possessed. For example, having reached his fifty he almost immediately slog-swept Luke Chapman for six before reverse-sweeping the next ball with equal ease to the backward point boundary.