In 2016, Duckett couldn't buy a run in India. Now, he's India's biggest headache. Here's how he did it
"We did loads of work one winter when he was in England," Botha says. "He would just phone me and say 'let's have a net' and we would just go. A lot of the time, it was about another pair of eyes, video analysis... the big thing for him in those days was about getting his pre delivery movements right. The bat face would close so the leg side was his go to but it also hindered him in certain areas. (Those sessions) it was fun, actually."
The winter in question was 2020 when England had seemingly moved past Duckett. To be fair to the national selectors, he himself had thought his chance had come and gone. But that didn't stop him from 'removing the mask' about his own game. The two coaches at Notts and Duckett had regular conversations about his game and soon enough, the Kent-born batter was okay 'to move his game to vulnerable areas'. Botha explains. "It wasn't ground-breaking or anything," Botha remembers. "It was just evidence-based... this is where we at, you ready to take your game to where you want it to go? And credit to Ben because he really opened up and that allows... it's an in for any coach."
Some of the conversations revolved around Duckett's first innings record at his then new club as well as a tendency to crossover with his feet. "The first thing we sort of worked through was getting his movements in a bit earlier," Botha, originally from Durban, explains. "He had the tendency to crossover a bit with his feet... we kind of stripped it bare. We simplified everything. After a point, he started to find his hands."
This was around the time when he had inadvertently changed his bat grip following an injury. While Botha does mention it, it's not like 'we went to the nets one day to work on his bat grip.' "A lot of coaching is just waiting for the right time to say anything," he says. "I just threw a lot of balls at him, he's a short guy, he wasn't scoring enough runs square of the wicket. His off-side play was not near where he would have liked it to be from a wagon wheel point of view. He wasn't accessing backward point enough."
The closed bat face was a problem. The solution was layered. "We didn't want to get too technical because that's not Ben's game. We just let him find it, we had experimental sessions and over time, he found it. There was no magic wand. It opened up the world on the off side."
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