Why it is make-or-break time for England’s Jos Buttler

LOVE is blind, or so the saying goes, and so it appears is faith when it comes to Jos Buttler and the England Test team.
England's Jos Buttler: Needs runs.England's Jos Buttler: Needs runs.
England's Jos Buttler: Needs runs.

The man who is currently keeping Jonny Bairstow and Ben Foakes out of the side as wicketkeeper goes into the Sri Lanka series that starts on Thursday week still seeking to crack the five-day format.

All the indications are that Buttler, who has scored one hundred in 41 Test appearances and averages 31, will continue as keeper ahead of Foakes, who was given a squad place in preference to Bairstow.

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England coach Chris Silverwood has said that dropping Buttler is “not in my mind” and that the player retains the full support of national selector Ed Smith and captain Joe Root.

On the one hand, England are to be commended for displaying loyalty.

Buttler averaged only 17 with the bat during the winter (he scored 158 runs in five Test appearances against New Zealand and South Africa in nine innings) and gone are the days when players routinely walked a selection tightrope.

Buttler has been given an especially fair crack of the whip and he himself acknowledges that it is now time to deliver and to repay the faith.

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On the other hand, some will feel that loyalty has gone too far in this case and that there is perhaps an element of face-saving at work – the decision to stick with Buttler made partly out of a desire to ensure that his selection did not look wrong in the first place, perhaps.

Whatever the case, this is surely make-or-break time for the mercurial Buttler, as much of an enigma at Test level as he is one of the most transparently gifted white-ball batsmen.

The days when a wicketkeeper was selected purely for his wicketkeeping skills, of course, went out with public telephone boxes and cassette recorders, and only Buttler’s nearest and dearest would put him above Foakes and Bairstow in that respect.

Runs are the currency that really counts, whether the ball is white or red, and if one takes for granted the fact that the keeper is not a walking disaster zone behind the stumps –the cricketing equivalent of Inspector Clouseau.

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Buttler has scored plenty of white-ball runs but red-ball returns remain frustratingly elusive; he has made just six first-class centuries in more than 100 appearances.

Buttler insists that he is committed to Test cricket – “the best form of the game” – and that he has “massive self-belief”.

However, a man who turns 30 in September acknowledges that he is “too old now to get picked on potential” and that “I haven’t got to the level I know I can get to” in Test cricket.

Perhaps it will all come right for him in the coming weeks, with England playing Tests in Galle and Colombo in another blink-and-you’ll-miss-it series.

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He is a busy bee as an all-format player with an Indian Premier League contract to boot, but he denies that fatigue has been a factor in his recent dip in form, which well he might given the riches on offer in the IPL.

One reason why England are so keen for Buttler to succeed and have persisted with him for so long in Test cricket is that he is a key part of their leadership group.

He is a selfless, team-oriented figure and an obvious successor to Eoin Morgan as white-ball captain.

Buttler is a good man for Test captain Joe Root to have around and brings a coolness and calmness in the heat of battle.

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Indeed, he ticks plenty of boxes apart from the one, perhaps, that puts him above Bairstow and Foakes in a three-horse race – the only box, in this instance, that actually matters.

Readers of these ramblings will be well aware that a personal preference is for Bairstow to keep wicket for England in 
Tests.

Although the Yorkshireman has had his challenges of late with the bat, he has 24 first-class hundreds to his credit – six in Tests – and has grown as a wicketkeeper to the extent that you hardly notice him because he barely puts a glove wrong.

Foakes has his supporters and he did an excellent job in Sri Lanka last time, scoring a century on debut after Bairstow lost his spot through injury.

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But as an out-and-out wicketkeeper/batsman in an era in which both departments are equally important, Bairstow would seem to tick more boxes as an all-round package than the other two, even accounting for any ups-and-downs in form, and he has proven himself over a lengthy period.

What this means for Buttler is this: with such highly-talented competition breathing down his neck, he cannot afford another mediocre series with the bat in Sri Lanka. All three players – Buttler, Bairstow and Foakes – are unfortunate in the sense that England have an embarrassment of riches in their department, with each player, on his day, a brilliant exponent.

The suspicion hereabouts is that, when all is said and done and this era of cricket is consigned to the pages of history, we will look back and remember Buttler, first and foremost, as a thrilling white-ball cricketer who never quite managed to crack it at Test level, a bit like Graeme Hick and Mark Ramprakash before him, although the circumstances in those cases were entirely different.

Of course, one could be completely wrong, and it is only modesty that prevents one from pointing out that that is rarely so.