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Ollie Pope made a jaunty hundred, so you’re supposed to talk about that. It’s just that Ollie Pope doesn’t open the batting the way Ben Duckett opens the batting.

Ben Duckett at times talks such A-grade bollocks that it can be easy to forget that opening the batting like an insane person is absolutely 100% working out for him.

Today England lost Zak Crawley in the very first over of the match. As Crawley’s opening partner, what Duckett is supposed to do when that happens is dig in, be watchful, weigh up conditions and see off the new ball.

Digging in for Ben Duckett means hitting the second, third, fourth and fifth balls you face for four.

When an opening batter gets to 16 off five balls, the obvious question is, “Why didn’t you leather the other one to the fence as well?”

The answer is that it was out of reach. Ben Duckett is quite possibly the most ball-hitful opener in the history of Test cricket (the stats say he leaves only around 1% of deliveries), so the ball being literally out of his reach is pretty much the only scenario where he won’t hit it.

Further reading: In Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley England finally have an opening partnership that doesn’t play each ball on its merits

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