England white-ball skipper Jos Buttler has emerged as one of the most destructive batters in limited-overs cricket in recent times. Having made his debut way back in 2011, the wicketkeeper batter quickly rose through the ranks and announced his arrival in international cricket.
Buttler had a historic season in the Indian T20 league earlier this year as he scored 863 runs with the help of a record-leveling four centuries. After warming the bench due to a calf injury in the recent Pakistan vs England T20I series, Buttler is raring to go in the upcoming 20-20 World Cup in Australia.
The 32-year-old recently gave an insight into his batting approach in T20 cricket in a conversation with ESPNCricinfo.
“You don’t have to take such big risks in the powerplay to be able to score at a certain rate. It’s one really good thing for my game that I’ve spent a long time in the middle order and now a reasonable chunk at the top of the order as well: I feel like I can try and marry the two areas of the game up and try and bat for a long time in a T20 game,” Buttler said.
The explosive batter further talked about a new revolution in T20 batting which may come up soon. He said that the batters could be seen turning down singles to stay at the crease when they are at the top of their game.
“It’s something you see at the end of an innings quite a bit – [MS] Dhoni used to – but maybe you’ll see that early in the innings as well. I’m sure that will happen more and more often. When someone does it with good success, it will give other people confidence. The question is who wants to be the first mover,” the England captain added.
Buttler also talked about a new approach towards chasing big totals in cricket which he has adopted from West Indies cricketers. The new method focuses on the number of boundaries needed rather than worrying about the required rate.
“I heard a few guys talk about it like ‘there’s eight overs left, if we hit five sixes in that time, we’ll win the game’. It’s just a different way of thinking. It actually came from Darren Bravo in the Bangladesh Premier League. I remember him running out and saying that to Marlon Samuels. I’d never really thought like that before. I’d always be thinking about how many runs we needed per over. I’ve just found it’s a way of taking pressure off,” the wicketkeeper batter said.
