England

Is it okay to drop Jos Buttler?

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Photo by Sarah Ansell
Photo by Sarah Ansell

Yeah, why not? It’s not like he’s scoring any runs at the minute. We’re also a great believer in the redemptive power of “I could do better than that.”

Have you ever found yourself believing you weren’t qualified to carry out a given task, only for someone else to complete it in your stead and do a really shitty job? Other people being crap at things is a real confidence booster.

Ideally, Jonny Bairstow would come in and do an excellent job as England wicketkeeper. Then again, he might not. In that event, Jos might well think: “I may have an odd first name and one too many Ts in my surname, but by the Beard of Grace I had my moments in Test cricket. Maybe I could have more moments.”

At that point, he’d turn into Sanath Jayasuriya only with more hair.

Plus it’s not like he’d be fully dropped, sentenced to 300 hours of county cricket. He’d still be in the team for the shorter formats where everything seems so effortless for him. Without Test failure grinding him down, we have every reason to believe that Buttler would at some point return to being England’s best one-day batsman.

Once he has, and having been vastly superior to his team-mates for a period of time, he’ll doubtless start to feel pissed off about not playing the longer format. Mark our words, a surly sense of being unjustly overlooked combined with poor form from your replacement is the recipe for Test success.

DON'T BE LIKE GATT!

Mike Gatting wasn't receiving the King Cricket email when he dropped that ludicrously easy chance against India in 1993.

Coincidence?

Why risk it when it's so easy to sign up?

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23 comments

  1. ‘More effortless’? Is that a thing now? Surely something’s effortless. i.e. requires literally zero effort, or requires some finite amount of effortless?

    Anyway, needless pedantry aside, it does sound like he’s going to be dropped (to leave Bairstow free to do a lot more dropping, eh readers?) judging by the wording used by Bayliss today:

    “He’s [Buttler] disappointed with the amount of runs he’s scored,” said Bayliss. “I don’t think he’s far off scoring runs.
    “We know he’s a class quality player and I believe he’ll play a lot for England going forward. We’re certainly not concerned about him long term.”

    Number of runs, yes. He’s certainly not scoring enough for them to be considered an uncountable mass noun. Buttler has a long-term future, however – he’s also due, it would seem.

    2. Not needless. We’d already stumbled over that line once and knew it was annoying. We’ll change it.

    3. But maybe he is due.

      He could have saved up all his runs and was going to use them now. But if they drop him he may lose his dueness.

  3. Isn’t Jos Buttler’s problem a failure to drop him?

    I mean, if Younis and Sarfraz Ahmed had both dropped him at Dubai he may have actually scored some bloody runs.

  4. Can you drop a wicket keeper who pretty much cannot buy a test match run at the moment?

    Yes you can.

    For sure we should persevere with him in one day stuff and he is more likely to revive his test career playing the other international stuff well than returning to county cricket.

    Especially in October. County cricket is rubbish at this time of year. Vacuous.

  5. If it means we pick an XI with more than three batsmen in it, I’m all in favour.

    I guess Taylor will be in for him, so at least we’ll have 3.5.

    I’d rather not have Moeen opening either, but I’d have no faith in Hales getting any runs either. Promote Bell to opener?

      2. Your post also suggests that you read the Telegraph and/or pay attention to Michael Vaughan. Not sure which is worse.

      3. TMS page on Facebook surprised me with it. I didn’t watch the accompanying video, oh God no.

    2. Actually these words echo Daisy’s thoughts on the matter, not least promoting Bell to opener.

      Daisy neither reads the Telegraph nor pays attention to Michael Vaughan. She reads tea leaves and pays attention to the Verdict, though.

  6. Jonny Bairstow keeping on a pitch where we will probably play 2 spinners? As daneel would say #justsaying

    1. He sounds like the sort of “wail” a resident of “Tokyo” might make during “sex”. A Tokyo Sex Wail, if you will. Except that his surname is pronounced SEX-WAH-LEH, so it would have to be a WAH-LEH made by a Tokyo resident during sex, and I don’t know what one of those is.

      Oh, I know. How about WALLY. A Tokyo Sex Wally. That being someone having sex in Tokyo in the middle of a big crowd while wearing a stripy hat.

      A Japanese sport where you kick a ball against a building as a precursor to sex?

  8. Well nobody else has made the tiresome obvious response, so I may as well:

    Yes, he’ll probably give you another chance in the next over.

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