Why I want Jos Buttler to pretty much just do what he’s doing for the time being

< 1 minute read

We’ve mentioned before that Jos Buttler would always be in our International Cricket Captain one-day team. At least he would be if we actually played the game any more. That might not sound like a particularly resounding vote of confidence, but it really is.

We’d go so far as to say that Buttler is one of our favourite players and yet we’re in no hurry for him to play a Test match, despite that being the only format where we follow and give a toss about every match.

Why is this?

Good question, if only because it breaks up the text a bit – although being as we’re going to answer using bullet points, it probably wasn’t necessary. Why are we in no hurry for Jos Buttler to play a Test?

• There’s plenty of time
• He’s probably not good enough at the minute
• In becoming good enough, he’ll probably end up sacrificing some of what currently makes him so fantastic

Surprisingly reliable irresponsible batting

Buttler functions best at the most irresponsible end of the batting spectrum. When a batsman needs to score most quickly, failure is unavoidably more likely. The whole point of Jos Buttler is that he is less affected by this. For most batsmen, risk increases exponentially with every attempted step up in scoring rate. For Buttler, the link is linear.

Basically, no-one scores at 12 an over without courting their own dismissal, but Buttler is able to evade that outcome far more reliably than most. For the time being, we’re happy watching him do that. The longer format rewards experience and we can envisage him developing the right kinds of quality a few years down the line.