On another day, Jos Buttler’s innings of seven off 14 balls might have been costly. Thanks to Phil Salt, England’s bowlers and Sri Lanka’s mental block against a side who have now won their last 12 T20 games against them stretching back to March 2016, it ultimately didn’t matter.
But if England are to win an unprecedented third T20 title, they will need at least three victories from four games, and that means little room for sentiment. It is time for some hard-nosed pragmatism: Buttler should drop down the order, and allow a colleague in better nick to exploit the generous advantages offered to batsmen by the six-over powerplay.
No team likes to change plans mid-tournament; some would consider it an admission of failure. After all, Buttler is not merely England’s most-capped all-format cricketer (Sunday’s match in Pallekele was his 408th), but their leading T20 run-scorer by a distance (his 4,010 runs leave second-placed Eoin Morgan, on 2,458, in his wake).
But no one who watched him fail to lay a bat on Sri Lanka’s left-arm quick Dilshan Madushanka, then miss his first attempt at a reverse-hit off spinner Dunith Wellalage, could have diagnosed anything other than a man flailing for form.
Jos Buttler struggles to get the ball off the square during England’s T20 World Cup victory over Sri Lanka on Sunday
Sri Lanka’s Dunith Wellalage celebrates the wicket of Buttler, who made a painful seven off 14 balls
Five innings in this World Cup have now brought him 60 runs, and a strike-rate of 113 – the lowest of any member of England’s top eight, and doubly damning because he starts his innings when only two fielders are allowed outside the inner ring.
If this were a blip, you could make an argument for the status quo: he’s world-class, therefore he’ll come good. But since thrashing South Africa for 83 off 30 balls at Old Trafford in September, Buttler has scored 202 runs in 12 T20 international innings at 16.
In the middle of that sequence, he passed 22 once in seven innings for Durban’s Super Giants at the SA20. Meanwhile, five ODI knocks this winter in New Zealand and Sri Lanka yielded a top score of 38.
Whether this is the start of a terminal decline for a player who turned 35 in September is unclear, though his dismissals for three against Scotland and Italy – on both occasions failing to clear mid-off – raised eyebrows.
Yet neither is it a debate with which England need to engage as they prepare for tomorrow’s Super Eight clash with Pakistan. All that matters for the moment is maximising the team’s chances of progression.
Buttler failed to clear the ropes against Italy and fell for just three
England’s opener should drop down the order and allow someone in better nick to make the most of the powerplay
And there should be no loss of face to ask Buttler to drop down to No 5 – which is more or less where he spent the first seven years of his T20 career – and shunt up Jacob Bethell, Tom Banton and Harry Brook.
Bethell has been a de facto opener in any case, on average walking out to the middle in this World Cup after 12 balls. The same logic applies to Banton and Brook. No 5, though, is as low as Buttler should go: Sam Curran is already punching above his weight at No 6, and Will Jacks has made a success of the finisher’s role at No 7.
Brook unwittingly captured England’s dilemma when he said Buttler was ‘just lacking a little bit of confidence at the minute’. But a World Cup is no place to rediscover that confidence in one of the most crucial roles in T20 cricket.
Buttler should be told to go for broke lower down the order, and allow Bethell’s more orthodox strokeplay to find the gaps in the first few overs. Because if England wait for Buttler to relocate his mojo, it may be too late.
