- Jos Buttler was part of the England team that won the 2019 Cricket World Cup
- He captained England in the 2023 World Cup where his team lost six matches
- His side were then thrashed by India in the semis at last year’s T20 World Cup
When Brendon McCullum was unveiled as England’s new all-format coach ahead of last summer’s final Test, against Sri Lanka at The Oval, he needed little invitation to talk about the body language of Jos Buttler.
‘He’s been a little bit miserable at times,’ said McCullum, with a smile. ‘I think he’s not naturally as expressive as some.’
During the recent tour of India, it was clear Buttler had taken the criticism on board: he has never looked likelier to be captured by the camera with a grin on his face.
Yet there is no escaping the fact that the Champions Trophy, which starts this week in Pakistan and the UAE, looms large in his evolution as captain. After his ‘miserable’ remark, McCullum insisted Buttler was ‘a fine leader’. But there is no doubt he could do with a few results to back that up.
Not many visiting teams win limited-overs series in India, but England looked even more off the pace during their 3-0 defeat in the one-day leg than they did while losing the T20s 4-1.
And the 50-over whitewash means they will go into their first game, against world champions Australia at Lahore on Saturday, with a terrible ODI record since beating New Zealand at home in September 2023: just four wins from 15 games, plunging them to seventh in the rankings, between Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.
Jos Buttler’s England warmed up for the ICC Champions Trophy with an ODI series in India
England lost the first two matches by four wickets before going down by 142 runs in the finale
Captain Buttler will find himself on thin ice if England fail to perform in the Champions Trophy
Buttler has already presided over two botched World Cup defences – the 50-over title in India 16 months ago, and the T20 edition in the Caribbean last summer, which cost head coach Matthew Mott his job. A blowout at the Champions Trophy will add fuel to the argument that Buttler was fortunate not to follow him through the exit.
Despite averaging only 20 during England’s 15-game horror sequence, he remains an all-time-great white-ball batsman. Only Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi has scored more than his 5,114 runs at a strike-rate better than his 116 – and Afridi averaged just 23 to Buttler’s 39.
For England, only Eoin Morgan – whose captaincy shoes have proved difficult to fill – has hit more than his 170 ODI sixes. In T20 internationals, Buttler is more than 1,000 runs clear of the pack.
And he is a double World Cup winner, the first time famously completing the run-out of New Zealand’s Martin Guptill that secured England’s 2019 win at Lord’s, the second time lifting the T20 trophy himself after victory over Pakistan in Melbourne. As a white-ball batsman, he is on the pantheon.
But England’s white-ball teams have long shed the aura they radiated under Morgan, and Buttler – smile or no smile – has not yet managed to get it back.
Their three opponents in Pakistan – Australia, Afghanistan and South Africa – all hammered England during the last 50-over global event, the 2023 World Cup in India. A repeat this time, and the pressure to return the 34-year-old Buttler to the ranks, and see out his career as a specialist batsman, will only grow.
