It didn’t look like he was ever gone. It seemed that he was very much here all this time. It didn’t take a lot out of Jos Buttler to smash the West Indian bowlers to the smithereens in the recent T20 international at the Kensington Oval.
Following up on a duck that marked his return to English colours (as seen in the opening game of the ongoing white-ball T20I series), Jos Buttler smashed 83 powerful runs.
What’s more?
It took the English captain just 7.3 overs, 45 deliveries to be precise, to notch up a remarkable half century in the Caribbean, his first since rejoining the team. And truth be told, while it was a day to dread for West Indian seamers, the English fans regaled with glee seeing the menacing white-ball form of one of their best.
However, Jos Buttler’s show wasn’t just restricted to great batting alone; while on the field in the first T20I, the Jos Buttler magic stung the Windies. For starters, he took an excellent reflex catch in the slip to remove the dangerous Nicholas Pooran, one of the lone hands for the hosts with a score of 38. And later on in the Windies’ batting inning, the blazing English captain removed the big hitting Sherfane Rutherford in the deep.
Two excellent catches that found the Windies reeling under pressure and the English right on top. Surely, his return to the English colours as a batter was far from satisfying; a first-ball-duck with an excellent catch collected at the third-man boundary paved way for a very early or premature exit (as one would call it) for the right hander.
But in the second T20 international, it was business as usual for Jos Buttler
As a matter of fact, so full of utility were England’s two strikingly powerful batters that while in the first game, Salt thumped a hundred with Buttler out early, in the second game, it was the case of the exact opposite.
How?
Because Jos Buttler picked up form in a way that he wasn’t ever out of it. In a literal case of a zero to hero scenario, the big hitting tall bloke put the West Indies bowlers to the sword; he was punishing against the spinners and particularly harsh against Romario Shepherd while being unsparing against Hinds, the newcomer.
Surely, the West Indies ought to have bowled better.
You cannot expect to win a T20 international especially when delivering 14 extras with not an awfully hard score against your name. But the English capitalised where the West Indies faltered. And the man who made them do so was none other than Jos Buttler.
From hereon in, it’s a simple case of Jos Buttler finishing the series with yet another high and pounding on the runs in the game that’s to follow. Game three of the 5-match T20I series is on Friday, November the fifteenth. But for the West Indies, it would be a tightly contested game where a huge psychological win would be removing Jos, the boss early.
The big question, however is, can that even happen?
