Refreshed Jos Buttler ready to confront captaincy demons

On a “gut call”, Buttler chucked the ball to Will Jacks to bowl the second over of England’s World Cup match against Australia. With a gale blowing to the short leg-side boundary, Travis Head and David Warner took Jacks apart with glee. Twenty-two runs came off the over. Australia won by 36.

It was the second of two tactical decisions that threatened to be what Buttler’s time as captain would be remembered for, rather than the 2022 T20 World Cup success. The first was England’s decision to field in 38C heat in Mumbai against South Africa, where the Proteas racked up 399 as Buttler’s men melted.

“It was probably hotter than we gave it credit for,” then head coach Matthew Mott said at the time. And fair play to the sun, by the way, what a player he is.

Back in Barbados, Buttler admitted he feared getting the chop after England’s consecutive World Cup failures. “I thought it was a possibility, absolutely,” he said. “At that point in time after the T20 World Cup, I’m sure Rob Key did a real in-depth look at everything to do with the white-ball set-up.

“I had some good conversations with Keysy and I said I didn’t want to be doing it because I’m the only person to do it, I want to be doing it because I’m the right person to do it. He believed I could lead the team forward and captain into the future and take the team into a good place.”

Buttler is an excellent cricketer, but a terrible poker player. Blessed and cursed with a face that betrays his every emotion, for much of the previous year captaincy appeared to be weighing heavily on him – to the point that new head coach Brendon McCullum at his unveiling jokingly described Buttler as seeming “miserable”.

Players are obliged to say they want to play and captain every game they can for their country, but Buttler’s calf injury, a recurring issue that ended up keeping him out of action for four months, allowed him the time to consider whether that was actually true for himself.

“All sorts of things run through your mind,” he said of time spent considering his future. “I think you try and work through everything.

“[Captaincy] is something I’ve really enjoyed the honour of doing and something I believe I can do well. When you really come down to it and think about the decision you’re going to make, it actually becomes very clear that now you’re determined to do it and keep going.”

The addition of McCullum as head coach – he will add the white-ball job to his Test portfolio from January – has provided Buttler with a fresh lease of life. When the Kiwi’s name was first mentioned, Buttler thought the appointment would be “impossible”, but with calendar easing in 2025, McCullum felt he was able to juggle both commitments.

“When you get an injury like that it makes you realise how desperately you want to get back, and the stuff that you really enjoy doing, so that’s the mindset I’ve got”

The pair have been friends for a long time, with McCullum hoping to lean into that relationship to get the best out of Buttler. McCullum’s own experiences as white-ball captain of New Zealand in the latter stages of his career have been a source of inspiration for Buttler.

“I had some chats with Baz about how this stage of your career can actually be the most rewarding,” Buttler said. “He spoke about his own experiences as captain in the last few years of when he was playing, it’s not about you at all, it’s about creating that environment and letting people flourish and how seeing them go to the top of the mountain was some of the happiest times of his career as a player. And that’s exactly what I want to get out of them.”

With a renewed commitment to the England set-up, Buttler says he wants to play “as much as he can” over the coming years and “help develop the next era of white-ball cricket”.

“You get a nice perspective of, when cricket’s taken away from you, how great it is, how important it is and how much you enjoy it. It’s all the little things that you sometimes take for granted that you really miss the most, like being around the changing room, pulling the shirt on. When you start to think about it, it gives you a lot of hunger and motivation to get back, put the work in and get playing again.”

Buttler’s new lease of life begins at the same scene where it looked like it might have ended – albeit England weren’t actually dethroned until the semi-final with India in Guyana. Tasked with leading a fresh-faced group against West Indies’ T20 all-stars, Buttler will do so from mid-off as he drop wicketkeeping for this series to experiment with where he is most happy captaining.

Winning will help, but regardless of the result, Buttler is a new man with a renewed sense of purpose.

“When you get an injury like that it makes you realise how desperately you want to get back, and the stuff that you really enjoy doing, so that’s the mindset of however long I’ve got back,” he said.

“I think throughout the three ODIs [against West Indies], Jacob Bethell scoring his maiden fifty, Dan Mousley [also] in the last game, you see those guys getting that opportunity and grabbing it which is incredibly exciting. And whatever that means in terms of squads, that’s exciting for English cricket.”