Golden duck-off: Which was this week’s funniest? Mohammed Siraj’s or Jamie Overton’s?

3 minute read

Golden ducks are always funny, but some are funnier than others. We’ve had two absolute classics in the last 24 hours and we honestly can’t choose between them.

Imagine you’re a tennis player. You drive down to the club where you play. You get changed. You walk on court. Your opponent serves. You miss it. You immediately go home.

That scenario seems absolutely ludicrous, but, fielding aside, it’s more or less what a golden duck amounts to. And that’s why they’re magical.

Jamie Overton 0(1)

If you’re not up to speed with the Jamie Overton situation, allow us to accelerate you. England like Jamie Overton because he can bowl really quite quickly and they aren’t going to let a piffling matter like ‘not currently being fit to bowl’ prevent them from picking him.

So it was that Overton played a couple of T20 internationals against Australia as a specialist batter this summer – even though he is very definitely not a specialist batter. He came in at number seven, which is sort of a batting spot when you’ve got a bunch of all-rounders. He made 15 off 9 balls in the first match and 4 not out off 4 balls in the second.

Now Overton’s in the Caribbean where he was picked for a 50-over match even though he still can’t bowl. He came in at number eight, which isn’t even sort of a batting spot. After a long walk out to do his specialist job, he missed a sweep shot first ball and then had to walk back again.

Mohammed Siraj 0(1)

Mohammed Siraj is not a specialist batter and no-one is trying to pretend that he is. He has made 108 runs in 31 Test matches. India asked him to bat at number four today because it was late afternoon and asking your number 11 to come in at four if a wicket falls late afternoon is a standard thing in cricket because cricket is mental.

Maybe they were persuaded by that dynamite performance of his in the first Test.

Anyway, after a long walk out to watch the night, Siraj missed his first ball and was given out LBW. Perhaps keen to make the most of his time as a middle-order batter, he then reviewed the decision. But it was still out.

Siraj’s role was to prevent Virat Kohli from having to face any late afternoon deliveries (which are of course uniquely difficult for middle-order batters) so that Kohli could instead come out and score runs against the morning bowling to which he is apparently more accustomed.

Alas, the single delivery that Kohli was successfully protected from did not prove pivotal because just a few balls later he ran himself out.

Kohli has now been out of form for five years and a bit.

Discussion

It feels like the setup for Overton’s (picking a number eight batter who isn’t actually a batter) was stronger. Set against that, India really ran with things once the golden duck had been secured.

Siraj’s wasn’t merely a nightwatchduck, he threw a review in there too. And then the man he was supposedly protecting (who was Virat Kohli) ran himself out for good measure.

But then much of the beauty of the golden duck is that instant and definitive hammer blow of bathos. We’re not sure stringing people along adding further context via an epilogue is really in the spirit of things.

In short, we can’t choose. Both were delightful.

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