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Cricket Players‘There was no real mystery in his bowling’: England opener on Pakistan's mystery spinner Abrar Ahmed
England opener Ben Duckett outrightly said that there was no real mystery to the bowling by the Pakistani spinner and England batters will plan well against him in the second innings.
Debutant Pakistan spinner Abrar Ahmed took the England team by shock when he scalped seven wickets in the first innings of second Test match on Friday. The leg-spinner dismissed the top seven batters in the England line-up including the likes of captain Ben Stokes and Joe Root. At one stage, England were 117/1 and then lost four quick wickets to the debutant and the score read 167/5. The visitors struggled to post 281 for the loss of 10 wickets in the first innings after Abrar ran through the top order.
Abrar's superb performance quickly grabbed eyeballs and some cricket experts hailed him as a ‘mystery spinner’. But England opener Ben Duckett who hit a quickfire half-century in the first innings, played down the hype around Abrar. Speaking to Sky Sports after the end of first day, Duckett outrightly said that there was no real mystery to the bowling by the Pakistani spinner and England batters will plan well against him in the second innings.
"I can only talk individually and I obviously had my plans for him. He was basically a leg-spinner who had a good googly; there was no real mystery to it. He bowled beautifully today and I'm sure we'll have our plans in the second innings - but I'm pretty sure that we won't be blocking it." said Duckett.
"I think I swept about 90% [of the time] and when you're sweeping, you don't tend to necessarily look for it, but his googly was a lot slower. In general, most of the guys actually said they did pick him. I think he just bowled some nice deliveries and unfortunately for us, it was his day," he added.
Talking further, Duckett highlighted his strategy on how he would play the spinner in the second innings of the match.
"There was limited footage, mainly on him bowling in the nets here, and not much to left-handers. Personally, I'd rather not know all of his tricks because I'd be worried and thinking about what he can do. I'd rather focus on what I can do to him,” said Duckett.
