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England reached the fastest team 50 in Test cricket on a frantic start to the first morning against the West Indies at Trent Bridge.
Responding to the early loss of Zak Crawley, the hosts reached 50 for one in just 4.2 overs to break their own 30-year-old record by one ball.
Duckett flies out of the blocks
After Crawley was worked over by Alzarri Joseph and edged a superb third ball to slip, where Alick Athanaze took a good low catch, Kraigg Brathwaite’s decision at the toss to bowl first looked vindicated.
Ollie Pope hit the last ball of the over for four and Jayden Seales opened up with a wide before Ben Duckett crunched the first four legal deliveries he faced to the boundary.
Back-to-back Pope boundaries in Joseph’s next over and another couple for Duckett off Seales made it 44 for one from four overs, with a single allowing the opener to keep the strike and hit Joseph for two and four to bring up the 50 partnership in 23 balls and the team landmark in 26.
Duckett went on to reach his personal half-century off 32 balls, matching the third-fastest in England’s history.
“You guys are history…”
England already held the top two places in the list of fastest 50s but, while the “Bazball” era has been littered with scoring records, those previous efforts date from 1994 and 2002.
The record was set at the Oval 30 years ago in the immediate aftermath of Devon Malcolm declaring “You guys are history” and destroying South Africa with nine for 57, bowling the tourists out for 175 to leave England a target of 204.
Graham Gooch accounted for 33 of those in 20 balls as he and Michael Atherton put on 56 and brought the half-century up in 27 balls, before Gooch was bowled by Craig Matthews. Graeme Hick and Graham Thorpe’s run-a-ball scoring saw the job finished inside 36 overs.
Third place now belongs to the 2002 run-chase against Sri Lanka at Old Trafford – set exactly 50 to win in six overs, Marcus Trescothick and Michael Vaughan needed only five.
Sri Lanka themselves reached 50 in 5.2 overs against Pakistan two years later as Sanath Jayasuriya and Marvan Atapattu made a swift start to what became a second-innings total of 406, albeit in a six-wicket loss.
India have twice reached the mark just one ball slower than that, Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir taking the attack to England in a six-wicket win in Chennai in 2008 and Yashasvi Jaiswal and Rohit Sharma making a fast start against the West Indies in Port of Spain last year.
