If Jonny Bairstow is growing tired of being asked whether he wants to continue as England’s Test wicketkeeper or revert to being a specialist batsman, then the man he replaced in the side – one who plans to mount a fresh assault on his place – can certainly empathise.
Jos Buttler, now back in the country after 11 weeks of playing Twenty20 cricket around India, says he faced similar doubts over his desire to wear the gloves in the past having, like Bairstow, shot to prominence primarily through his exploits with a bat in hand.
It is what prompted Buttler to leave Somerset for Lancashire at the end of the 2013 season, when Craig Kieswetter was preferred as the club’s first choice wicketkeeper. As one of the country’s most dynamic and explosive talents, Buttler could have stuck it out as a batsman but instead decided to up sticks in order to remain behind the stumps.
And so he fully understands why Bairstow, who needs only two dismissals in the third Test with Sri Lanka at Lord’s on Thursday to pass the English record of 17 in a three-match series held by Geraint Jones against the same opposition in 2006, might be a tad prickly on the subject, even if the alternative scenario that has been floated, one where the Yorkshireman’s astonishing batting form is harnessed up the order, sees Buttler back in.
“Jonny wants to be a wicketkeeper-batsman and it must be frustrating that people are questioning that,” Buttler told the Observer. “People need to leave him alone and get behind him – it’s obvious how much he wants to keep wicket and he’s done well. I remember those very same questions and it wasn’t until I moved to Lancashire people started to believe me.
“All that stuff about whether we can play in the same Test team, it’s irrelevant for me. He’s the man in possession. And if you have been dropped from the side you have to show you have improved and demand to be selected. That’s what he did. He made himself to impossible to ignore.”
How Buttler achieves this is complicated by the schedule. Sunday’s Royal London Cup fixture for Lancashire at home to Warwickshire continues an exclusive diet of white-ball cricket that began after the second Test against Pakistan in Dubai – the last in the whites of his country – and runs up until the end of England’s limited-overs series with Sri Lanka.
Given the 25-year-old’s status as England’s first-choice wicketkeeper for those five one-dayers and single Twenty20 where, ironically, Bairstow could feature as a batsman, the first County Championship fixture Buttler could play for Lancashire, against Durham on 16 July, comes two days after the first Test with Pakistan begins at Lord’s, with just one more before the series ends and the one-dayers start again.
Buttler does not regret his short-term career choices, however, having stayed on in India after the final of the World Twenty20 to play for Mumbai Indians in the Indian Premier League. It is a spell in which he claims to have learned “a lot about cricket and myself as a person”, having played 14 matches in the tournament and finished their third highest scorer.
As well as being blown away by the IPL experience, and having learned about coping with expectation that comes with having a £385,000 price tag and being one of four overseas players permitted in the playing XI, Buttler embraced the country as a whole, with a visit to the slums of Mumbai a personal highlight in an otherwise travel-heavy itinerary.
He said: “India is such an attack on your senses and is unrivalled for the passion surrounding cricket. But one of the best things away from playing was a visit to a Mumbai slum. You see people in their conditions, getting stuck into their way of life and not moaning, and realise how lucky you are to be doing what you are doing. It put things into perspective.”
While his time with Mumbai lacked one stellar knock, like the unbeaten 66 against Sri Lanka that sealed England’s semi-final place in the World Twenty20 or his three record-breaking one-day knocks in the last two years, then it did benefit his game in terms of preparation; Buttler believes playing for a franchise, one coached by Ricky Ponting and with Sachin Tendulkar and Jonty Rhodes in the dugout, taught him the need for greater self-reliance.
“Going into a new environment with new coaches posed the question as to how well I actually know my own game. To have these big names asking what I want from them, and what makes me tick, showed me how selfish you have to be with your practice. You have to demand from them what you believe will get the best out of yourself, rather than be told what to do.”
While the focus was naturally on performing for his employer, Buttler did take the time to tap up Ponting, the former Australia captain, for advice on how best to break back into Test cricket. The feedback was mental, rather than technical, and reaffirmed his own suspicion that during last summer’s Ashes series, when he averaged 15.25 with the bat, his focus was all wrong.
“I had a bit of a chat with Ricky and his advice was about understanding your game and taking ownership of it. No one can do it for you, it’s down to you. That’s what you notice about the top players at the IPL, they have that belief and trust in their own ability.
“My Test career started well and I was happy but in the Ashes I fell away. I went away from what I do well. I was worrying about how Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Johnson or Josh Hazlewood would get me out and how I would counter it, but in doing that forgot how I was going to score runs and put pressure on them, which is what I’m good at. I have to be more focussed on myself.”
