England

What is Jos Buttler’s main skill?

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Jos Buttler’s main skill is making sure that when he walks out to bat he accesses being in his zone… apparently.

Because those are not our words. Those are the words of Jos Buttler himself.

According to Cricinfo, he reckons: “The main skill, and the biggest one that I do well when I’m at my best, is making sure that when I walk out to bat I access being in my zone, whether I’ve been waiting for six hours or just have a 10-minute turnaround in a T20.”

We’ve no idea how to access being in our zone, which is presumably why Jos Buttler is a hugely successful international cricketer and we are whatever the hell we are. We’re not sure we should admit this, but we don’t even know what those words mean. Not combined in that way at any rate.

Elsewhere in the interview, Buttler talks about learning to manage his energy resources to cope with all of his playing obligations. (Hopefully he’ll learn to make sure he can access his energy conservation zone before 2021 because 2021 is going to be an absolute killer for the England players.)

He also talks about doing things ‘his way,’ which lets us in on some of the latest thinking guiding the evolution of the Jos Buttler formula.

He says he’s going to, “try and do more of committing to my way, whether it’s trying to block 1,000 balls or slog 1,000 balls.”

It is not clear from his comments whether or not he is aware there are other options.

Similar deliveries:

Default ThumbnailPeter Siddle’s UNBELIEVABLE skill

14 comments

  1. Has Jos been in close proximity with a certain barrel chested, left handed, retired Australian opener recently? Perhaps during one of his franchise stints. I have been in favour of English players going to play in these tournaments but if it leaves them in danger of such talk maybe we need to reconsider.

    1. Yes, there is a familiar sort of whiff to this incoherence. At another point he tries to say “change” but can’t stop himself saying “change-up” instead.

  2. I’ve read stuff like this about Buttler before and it always rather surprises me. I would have thought that for a player like him, who has as the foundations of his game phenomenal hand eye coordination and superb athleticism, the game would be simple. Let lesser mortals tie them selves in knots over psychology and technique. But instead he is an obsessive psycho-babbler.

    I was struck when watching Ponting doing a masterclass on Sky a few years back, that he knew exactly how complicated cricket was, and exactly how complicated it wasn’t. His clarity was as astonishing as his brutal little face was irritating. I suspect that may be why his test average was about twice Buttler’s

  3. I’m really concerned about this psycho-babble I must say. I haven’t heard such stuff from Buttler before.

    In other news, I had a big winning game of tennis today. I left it all out there. I gave it 120%. I performed well as a unit. I executed my skill sets. I was on the money with my serves. I got my returns in the right areas,

    But most importantly of all, I tended to get the ball over the net one time more often than my opponent, in the majority of the points.

    1. I’m just assuming half of the job of an England player these days is sitting around listening to someone or other talk at you like that.

    1. Surely there are appropriate levels of cognitive sportsmanship, somewhere between overthinking/psycho-babble and Trumpism/Priti Vacancy?

  5. I thought his main skill was clearing his front leg and hoicking it over cow corner.

    (I’m joking, mostly. I like the fact that Buttler can absolutely cane it to all parts and have been in favour of getting him into the test team for a few years now, but I wish people didn’t talk like this. It is just so much nonsense.)

    1. This is one of the main reasons why we only interview cricketers about once every five years.

  6. We all love Jos, but God it’s obvious he doesnt have a FC body of work to fall back on. Every interview he does he seems to change how he thinks he’s going to be successful in Test cricket. He either needs to adapt his game, or trust his instincts. Care really deeply, or fuck it. Play the situation, or take control of it. Trust his defence, or ignore it.

    My gut is England dont really know what they want him to be either, which doesnt help

    1. The limit to a “natural” game is that it has to work.

      The problem for Buttler is that he doesn’t know if his natural game works.

      It is like you hired a chef who cooks very good veg biryani to cook mutton biryani, so he has to workout a recipe on the job & somedays the biryani tastes good, somedays not so much.

      2. Thats the beauty of Biryani. Goes very well with cricketing metaphors.

        For example, read the below interview by Virat Kohli & replace everything he says about test match batting with cooking mutton biryani.

        It makes for a hilarious read

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