England are far from solving the Jos Buttler conundrum

Could you blame the general public for not believing in him, though? This was, after all, a man who, prior to facing his first ball in the second innings in which England needed to chase 277, had averaged 31.72 in Test cricket across six years and 79 innings and had not played a knock of real substance for over 18 months. This was a man who had given the fans no reason to believe in him and was in the team solely because he was liked by chief selector Ed Smith, who looked like he was willing to sacrifice his job to keep Buttler in the Test side.

Nasser Hussain in ‘Third Man’, after Rory Burns dismissal in the first innings of the ongoing Test, had a fascinating insight into what had gone wrong with the left-hander. He noted that Burns, who had made technical tweaks to his game to avoid falling over and getting dismissed LBW (four of Burns’ first seven dismissals this summer was LBW),  due to the adjustments he made, ended up exposing a different chink in his armour. By trying to consciously avoid ‘not falling over’, Burns instead started fending his bat outside off-stump, due to which he found himself dismissed twice in two innings in identical fashion - nicking a fifth-stump delivery to the slip cordon. 

While Butler's batting form has seen a drastic surge - across 6 Tests he’s averaged 52.00 - his keeping has proportionally plummeted to unfathomable standards. Having boasted a 100% success rate with respect to catching between May 2018 and June 2020, since the start of the summer, however, he has made inexplicable and unjustifiable errors that he was seldom seen committing in his first 21 Tests as a keeper.

His drop of Jermaine Blackwood in the first Test versus the Windies, for instance, cost England the match while his gaffe’s at Old Trafford off the bowling of Dom Bess, which gave Shan Masood multiple lives, almost ended up costing England another Test match. Of course, it was to his credit that he made amends for shoddy glovework with the bat in his hand, but an encore of his sloppiness behind the wickets in both the second and the ongoing third Test has raised the suspicion if he could ever be a viable long-term option as a wicket-keeper batsman who will be reliable on both fronts.

It is true that Buttler's glovework was exceptional up until this summer and it is true that there has been a magnifying glass on his keeping of late, not least because of his struggles with the bat, but a little bit of context can go a long way in justifying the concerns - he is, to date, yet to complete a stumping in Test cricket and in his entire 111-match first-class career, has inflicted a grand total of two stumpings. Is it worth for England to be taking a punt on someone with such glaring inexperience and vulnerability?

A safer and logical option for them would be to employ Buttler as a specialist batsman, giving the gloves to Ben Foakes - who kept wickets in England’s 3-0 rout of the Lankans in 2018 and is considered the best gloveman in the country - but that move, too, comes with its own set of quandaries. Granted Ben Stokes returns to the side - which is a certainty - the integration of Foakes as a specialist wicket-keeper to accommodate Buttler as a pure batsman would, in turn, mean the side getting rid of one of Dom Sibley or Rory Burns. 

On the contrary, asking Buttler to take the gloves would not only render the side vulnerable behind the wickets, it would also serve as a curse for the man himself. Should all three of Sibley, Burns and Crawley retain their spots, and should Stokes slot into the side, Butter would be forced to move away from the No.6 spot, his favourite batting position which has yielded him enormous success. Buttler averages 49.88 at No.6, 19 more than any other position he has batted in, but him taking the gloves would ultimately mean giving up privileges with the bat as, logically, it would be witless to make Pope bat at No.7. In any event, both Buttler and England would be put in an uncomfortable situation; there’s no escaping it. 

Perhaps we are being too critical and judgemental of Buttler and perhaps we are reading too far ahead into the future. Everyone has their bad days at the office and it might very much be possible that Butler's blunders are being scrutinized way more than they should be. But when there’s a Mohammad Rizwan on the other side making wicket-keeping look so darn easy in conditions which couldn’t be more different to the ones he comes across back home, and when there’s a world-class gloveman waiting on the sidelines, it is hard to give the Taunton-born keeper the benefit of the doubt - not anymore, at least.