LONDON: Jos Buttler said that the time he spent with Rajasthan Royals in the 2018 edition of the Indian Premier League has helped him gain confidence in Test cricket. “Those couple of weeks in the IPL gave me huge amounts of confidence,” Buttler said after England’s victorious second Test against Pakistan in Leeds. Buttler has been in an incredible run of form in the series and has only once not crossed the half century-mark in the four innings that he played. In fact, that was the only the second time in his last nine innings for England and Rajasthan Royals.
“To be in those pressure situations in India, playing in front of crowds, the pressure of being an overseas player. That showed me a lot about where I was at and where I can get to, so that gave me a lot of confidence,” said Buttler. “For me, not trying to worry about the colour of the ball definitely helps. Having put in good performances elsewhere and not putting as much pressure on myself.”
Buttler’s belligerence was one of the main reasons why Rajasthan Royals managed to push themselves to the knockout stages of the tournament. That also earned him a surprise recall to the England Test setup and his absence was clearly felt by the Royals, who lost to Kolkata Knight Riders in the eliminator.
Buttler said that going through the motions of T20 cricket has helped him gain confidence in his batting in the longest format of the game. “Now my mentality is quite similar to my first few Tests. I’m not worrying about external factors. I’m just trying to play the game and trusting myself,” said Buttler. “In T20 there’s generally another game soon after, so you know you’ve got another opportunity coming up. You probably just move on if you fail. But in Test cricket, if you get out early, you have a long time to think about it. I started to think too much about how to not get out, as opposed to how to score runs. I got in a really bad rut that I just couldn’t get out of. The only real way to get out of it was to be dropped. And actually, being dropped released a lot of pressure. It wasn’t very long after that that I made an ODI hundred in Dubai, which was a turnaround for me after a long and hard six months.”
