Ben Duckett's 167 Carries England to 386 for 5 Against Sri Lanka in Lahore

By TaazaPulse News Desk · Published: 29 October 2026 · TaazaPulse Cricket Desk

Ben Duckett produced the innings of the tri-series on Thursday, scoring a career-best 167 as England piled up 386 for 5 against Sri Lanka in the sixth and final league match of the Pakistan-hosted ODI tri-series at Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore. It was a dead rubber in the table — Sri Lanka had already qualified for Saturday's final against Pakistan, and England were already eliminated after three straight defeats — but nobody told Duckett. His third century in four innings at this ground, and his second in consecutive matches here, turned a consolation fixture into the most searched cricket story in Pakistan on Thursday, with "England vs Sri Lanka" and "Eng vs SL" together drawing more than a quarter of a million Google searches.

Sri Lanka captain Kusal Mendis won the toss and chose to field, a decision that looked worse with every over of the opening stand. Duckett and Tom Banton put on 163 for the first wicket, the pair batting through the first 25 overs and both passing fifty. Dasun Shanaka finally broke the stand at the halfway mark, bowling Banton for 74 off 75 balls, an innings of eight fours and two sixes. By then the platform was set, the Lahore pitch was playing true, and England's reshuffled batting order — captain Harry Brook promoted to number three, with Will Jacks, Jordan Cox and Sam Curran all pushed up ahead of Joe Root — was built to exploit it.

A Lahore love affair: three hundreds in four innings

Duckett's relationship with Gaddafi Stadium is becoming one of the stories of England's white-ball year. The left-hander's previous ODI best was 165, made against Australia in the Champions Trophy at this same venue last year. On Thursday he passed it, reaching his sixth ODI century and then pressing on to 167 off 132 balls, with 24 fours. The stand with Brook added 107 in just 75 balls for the second wicket, Brook contributing a brisk 44 off 34 balls with three fours and two sixes before he toe-ended a ramp back to Asitha Fernando in the 38th over.

Duckett fell in the 42nd over, scooping a slower full toss from Eshan Malinga straight to Fernando at short fine-leg. It was the only wicket Malinga took in a punishing day — his ten overs cost 101 runs — but it removed the man who had controlled the innings from the first over. Fernando was Sri Lanka's most successful bowler with 2 for 63, while Dilshan Madushanka, whose 5 for 34 had destroyed Pakistan on Tuesday, finished with 1 for 64 from nine overs.

The finish: 92 runs in the last ten overs

England's late order made sure Duckett's work was not wasted. Jordan Cox thrashed 43 off 27 balls, sharing stands with Will Jacks, who made 30 off 21, and Sam Curran, who finished unbeaten on 21 off 12. Cox was dismissed off the final ball of the innings, and England closed on 386 for 5, having added 92 runs in the last ten overs. For a side that had failed to defend 429 against these opponents in Rawalpindi last week — Sri Lanka chased 430 for 8 with a ball to spare, on the back of Harry Brook's 202 for England — and then conceded an 89-run last-wicket stand to Pakistan on Sunday, a total of 386 still carried no guarantees at the interval.

The context made the innings more impressive, not less. England arrived at this match with three successive defeats and nothing to play for except pride and places. Three of their senior planning questions — the opening partnership, Brook's position, the finishing roles — all received positive answers in one afternoon. Banton's 74 was his third fifty-plus score of the tour. Brook's self-promotion to number three produced tempo without risk to the innings' shape. And Cox, keeping wicket in this side, showed the late-overs hitting England have been searching for all series.

Sri Lanka's chase: the target and the start

Sri Lanka's reply lost Kamindu Mendis early, for 4, but Avishka Fernando and captain Kusal Mendis rebuilt with an 83-run stand, and for a while the chase lived: Kusal made 89 off 71 balls and Pavan Rathnayake struck a superb 118 off 77, with 15 fours and a six. But once Rathnayake fell, the innings folded — Sri Lanka were bowled out for 331 in 45.1 overs, and England won by 55 runs, their first and only win of the series. The result does not change Saturday's final: Pakistan vs Sri Lanka, at this ground, at 1pm.

What this match tells us about Saturday's final

For Pakistan, watching from the dressing room of their own home series, the lessons were mixed. Sri Lanka's batting depth — the reason they chased 430 in Rawalpindi and 114 without fuss in Lahore on Tuesday — is the obvious threat. But Thursday also showed the other side of Sri Lanka: an attack that can be taken for 386 when its plans fail, with seven bowlers used and only Fernando emerging with real credit. Pakistan's bowlers, by contrast, dismissed Sri Lanka's opponents cheaply twice in this series, and their own batting collapse to 110 on Tuesday remains the hosts' one open wound. Shadab Khan's unbeaten 113 against England on Sunday and the one-wicket win it produced showed Pakistan's lower order can rescue a chase; the top order's job on Saturday is to make sure it does not have to.

England, meanwhile, fly home with the series' two most extraordinary batting feats — Brook's 202 in a losing cause and Duckett's 167 in a dead rubber — and one win from their four matches, Thursday's 55-run consolation victory. Their elimination was sealed on Tuesday when Sri Lanka beat Pakistan, a result that confirmed the final pairing with a game to spare. Thursday's game therefore closes the league stage of a tri-series that has produced a record chase, a one-wicket thriller, a team bowled out for 110, and a consolation win for England to end it.

The tri-series so far: a league stage of extremes

Pakistan opened the series as hosts and favourites and, despite Tuesday's collapse, reached the final with the win over England built on Shadab's century and an unbeaten 89-run last-wicket stand with Haris Rauf. Sri Lanka's route ran through the two most decisive results of the league stage: the 430 chase in Rawalpindi and the eight-wicket demolition of Pakistan in Lahore, in which Madushanka took five wickets and Kamindu Mendis finished unbeaten on 62. England's three defeats were each, in their own way, extraordinary — a record total defended unsuccessfully, a game lost to the last pair, and a place in the final gone before their last match began.

Saturday's final, then, pairs the hosts with the form team. Sri Lanka have beaten Pakistan once in this series and England twice. Pakistan have home conditions, a point to prove after 110 all out, and a bowling attack led by captain Shaheen Shah Afridi, who rose to sixth in the ICC ODI bowling rankings this week. The league stage ended on Thursday night in Lahore; the trophy is decided at the same ground, in front of the same crowd, on Saturday afternoon.

The ghost of Rawalpindi

To understand why nobody at Gaddafi Stadium treated 386 as enough, you have to go back six days. In Rawalpindi, England produced what looked like a series-defining innings: 429 for 4, with Brook making 202 in one of the great one-day innings played on Pakistani soil. Sri Lanka chased it. They reached 430 for 8 with a ball to spare, winning by two wickets, in a pursuit that broke England's campaign in half — a side that cannot defend 429 begins to doubt everything, and England's subsequent results, the one-wicket loss to Pakistan and elimination with a match to spare, flowed from that night. It is why Thursday's interval talk was not about whether 386 was a good score — by any normal measure it is an enormous one — but about whether this Sri Lanka batting line-up, on this ground, in this series, believes any target is beyond it.

There was a selection footnote to England's innings that told its own story about where the tourists' heads were. Will Jacks, Jordan Cox and Sam Curran were all sent in ahead of Joe Root, England's most decorated one-day batter, who did not bat at all. In a dead rubber, with the flight home booked, England used the innings as a laboratory for the next cycle: Banton opening, Cox at the death, Jacks given overs with bat and ball. The experiment produced a mountain of runs and, whatever the chase brings, a clearer picture of the batting order England will build around Brook when the series that matter resume.

Duckett and Lahore: a genuine love affair

Some batters have a ground; Duckett has a city. His three hundreds in four innings at Gaddafi Stadium include the 165 against Australia at last year's Champions Trophy — made in a losing cause, on a night when England's tournament quietly ended — and now a career-best 167 that surpassed it. The left-hander's method travels unusually well to Lahore's true surfaces: he sweeps and reverse-sweeps the spinners out of their lengths, picks the gaps square of the wicket against pace, and on Thursday he did it without a single six, a statistic that would have been implausible in a modern 167 until you watch how he scores — 24 boundaries, relentless rotation, and a strike rate of 126 built on placement rather than power. When he fell, scooping a slower ball to short fine leg, he had batted into the 42nd over and set a platform England's finishers merely had to stand on.

His partner deserves a paragraph of his own. Banton's 74 was his third fifty-plus score of the tour, and the 163-run opening stand was the partnership that broke Sri Lanka's plan: Kusal Mendis had chosen to field expecting the evening dew to help a chase, and by the time Shanaka bowled Banton at the halfway mark, England's rate was already set at a level Sri Lanka's bowlers never pulled back. Brook's self-promotion to number three — 44 off 34, ended by a toe-ended ramp back to Asitha Fernando — kept the innings in fifth gear, and the 107 the captain added with Duckett in 75 balls was the day's fastest sustained scoring.