Australia’s ruthless attack exposes Jos Buttler’s weakness again

Nobody epitomises England’s uncertainty more acutely than Jos Buttler.

England’s Jos Buttler leaves the field after being dismissed by Peter Siddle at Lord’s. Picture: Getty Images

The Australians sensed their opponents’ indecision. Usually when the coin goes up for the toss, the captain in whose favour it falls looks up rather than down. In other words he pays more attention to the skies above than the pitch beneath his feet.

Here, though, Tim Paine, the Australia captain, appeared to do neither. Rather he looked into the eyes of the England team and saw indecision. That was why he sent them into bat. There are so many questions swirling around the England batting line-up that it appears difficult for them to play with any great collective confidence.

Nobody epitomises this uncertainty more acutely than Jos Buttler. Others such as Jason Roy and Joe Denly may be unsure about whether they truly belong in this arena, but this was a question Buttler was supposed to have answered last summer in his second coming to the longer format.

He was national selector Ed Smith’s wildcard pick, the magician in white-ball cricket whose tricks would inevitably transfer to the Test format if he were given an extended run. He was too good to ignore. A century at Trent Bridge against India appeared to be confirmation of this. There followed six half-centuries, including two in the final Test of last winter in the Caribbean. But something seems amiss right now. There is talk of fatigue, both mental and physical, with Buttler playing in all formats, and the Indian Premier League too, with some wicketkeeping and some captaincy stints thrown in. It is a hectic and unrelenting schedule and Buttler was shattered after the World Cup, where he was not really at his consistent and destructive best with the bat.

Test cricket is no place for a wearied mind. It requires every ounce of your mental energy because it always does as it says on the tin and tests your mind like no other format. But we can only surmise on the subject of fatigue. Test cricket also examines technique like no other form of the game, and it is in this respect that Buttler has looked especially vulnerable in his three unsuccessful innings in this series so far.

The accuracy of the Australian seamers has been remarkable and the brutal truth for Buttler has been that every time they have landed the ball on a good length he has looked in trouble. That is, of course, the idea behind bowling that length — it should put the batsman in two minds — but it has caused Buttler more problems than it really should.

It raises the debate of whether Buttler should be batting so high at No 5, especially whether he should be in front of Ben Stokes, who has a conspicuously more orthodox method. Buttler’s one Test century, against India at Trent Bridge last summer, came at No 6 (having been at No 7 in the first innings of that match), with Stokes a place higher at No 5.

It also casts one’s mind back to when Buttler was previously dropped from Test cricket in 2015.

“I started to think too much about how not to get out, as opposed to how to score runs,” he said about that period.

THE TIMES