Ben Duckett will fly to Bangladesh on Thursday for England’s opening tour of the winter after becoming the first cricketer to win both the PCA Players’ Player of the Year and PCA Young Player of the Year in the same season.
The 21-year-old left-hander claimed the trophies, which were voted for by his peers, at the Professional Cricketers’ Association awards in London on Wednesday evening following a golden summer when he scored 2,706 runs across all formats and starred in Northamptonshire’s T20 Blast-winning campaign.
Duckett, who won the Cricket Writers’ Club Young Player of the Year award on Tuesday and is part of both the one-day and Test squads to face Bangladesh in October, said: “It seems to have been good news each week. I keep saying every week: ‘that has topped off my summer’ and then something else happens.
“Winning these two NatWest PCA Awards is probably the highlight of my summer. I got my England call-ups and so many other things have happened. If someone had said at the start of the season that all this would happen I wouldn’t have believed it.
“I wasn’t expecting this. To be nominated for both awards was an honour in itself so to win them both is something very special. Most of the guys who have won the awards in the past have played for England or in international cricket so to follow them is a very great honour.”
Tammy Beaumont was voted Women’s Player of the Summer by her fellow England players after a season in which she scored 342 runs in three one-day internationals against Pakistan – including back-to-back hundreds – and 142 runs in the three Twenty20 internationals that followed.
The Test Player of the Summer award was given to Chris Woakes following a breakthrough season for England in which he claimed 34 wickets in six Tests against Sri Lanka and Pakistan and registered two half-centuries with the bat.
Both Woakes and Duckett were also named in the PCA team of the year along with seamer Toby Roland-Jones, whose hat-trick completed a first County Championship title for Middlesex in 23 years with victory over Yorkshire at Lord’s last Friday.
PCA team of the year
Adam Lyth (Yorkshire), Keaton Jennings (Durham), Ben Duckett (Northamptonshire), Joe Root (C) (Yorkshire & England), Jonny Bairstow (Yorkshire & England), Liam Dawson (Hampshire & England), Tim Bresnan (Yorkshire), Chris Woakes (Warwickshire & England), Keith Barker (Warwickshire), Toby Roland-Jones (Middlesex), Jeetan Patel (Warwickshire)
