The decay mechanism of 217At⁎ formed in reaction is studied within the dynamical cluster-decay model (DCM) at various center-of-mass energies. The aim is to see the behavior of a light neutron-rich radioactive beam on a doubly-magic target nucleus for the (total) fusion cross section and the individual decay channel cross sections. Experimentally, only the isotopic yield of heavy mass residues [equivalently, the light-particles (LPs) evaporation residue cross sections for neutrons emission] are measured, with the fusion–fission (ff) component taken zero. For a fixed neck-length parameter ΔR, the only parameter in the DCM, we are able to fit almost exactly for 9Li on 208Pb at all 's. However, the observed individual decay channels (3n–6n) are very poorly fitted, with unobserved channels (1n, 2n) and strongly over-estimated. Different ΔR values, meaning thereby different reaction time scales, are required to fit individually both the observed and unobserved evaporation residue channels (1n–6n) and , but then the compound nucleus (CN) contribution is very small (), and the non-compound nucleus (nCN) decay cross section contributes the most towards total (). Thus, the 9Li induced reaction on doubly-magic 208Pb is more of a quasi-fission-like nCN decay, which is further analyzed in terms of the statistical CN formation probability and CN survival probability . For the reaction under study, and , in particular at above barrier energies.