To be even more useful for Bangladesh, stepping away from T20Is could be the way to go for the wicketkeeper-batter

Mohammad Isam11-Jan-2022Litton Das’ counter-attacking innings on the third – and final – day of the Christchurch Test against New Zealand was the highlight from Bangladesh’s point of view. His approach, in which he strings together boundaries to put pressure on the opposition, which often forces a change in their tactics, worked well on the day, as he scored his second Test century despite an innings-and-117-run defeat.”He is technically very sound,” Bangladesh captain Mominul Haque said after the Test. “He gets a lot of time like world-class players. He always ensures he scores off the bad balls. He waits for a long time for the bad balls, and then makes it count. He has scored two centuries in consecutive series. Everyone, including myself, was really enjoying his batting.”Related

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Whichever direction Bangladesh goes in in the coming months, Litton has shown now that he is capable of taking on greater responsibility. In Christchurch. Mushfiqur Rahim’s injury meant that Bangladesh needed a middle-order batter with a bit of experience. Nurul Hasan was picked, which also mean that Litton could play as a batter at No. 5, giving him a significant role in the middle-order.The first innings didn’t go as planned. Trent Boult’s full delivery found Litton’s inside edge, as Bangladesh slipped to 27 for 5 after tea on the second day. Litton was one of the top five who all got out for single-digit scores. But unlike the four batters before him, Litton managed to bounce back with a significant score in the second innings.After following-on, Bangladesh’s second innings, despite a promising start, was going nowhere when Yasir Ali was dismissed before tea on the third day. Litton, however, stole the show in the next couple of hours.

The difference in Litton’s form in T20Is and Tests could mean that, even at this stage in his career, he might have to take a decision on how many formats he plays. He forms a strong opening pair with Tamim Iqbal, when he is available, in ODIs, but perhaps for Bangladesh to do well in Tests in the coming years, Litton’s focus should be on that middle-order

In a calculated attack, he took 17 and 16 off Kyle Jamieson and Trent Boult. He pulled and ramped the ball against the tall Jamieson, while driving Boult with confidence; the last of the four boundaries off the left-armer, a straight drive, really stood out.Suddenly, from a meandering 33 off 64 balls, Litton got to 64 within the next nine balls he faced.He lost Nurul and Mehidy Hasan Miraz not long after, leaving him in the 80s with the tail-enders. And soon, he was up against Neil Wagner, a bowler he had hit with three fours off before the tea break. Wagner didn’t hold back either, bouncing Litton repeatedly, and taunting him to go for his shots. Litton responded. He first pulled and then flat-batted Wagner over the covers for two fours. The second shot was very uncharacteristic, but it was yet another example that he was ready to play out of his comfort zone.Litton had already showed that he had the chops in Mount Maunganui. Walking into a situation when Bangladesh had lost Mushfiqur after a tough 19-over spell in the first innings, Litton left his stamp with an attacking 86. Bangladesh needed his positivity at that stage, because Mominul was more inclined to play a conservative role. Litton took on Tim Southee, Jamieson and Wagner, while maintaining caution against Boult and, somewhat surprisingly, Rachin Ravindra.Litton Das had a poor time of it at the T20 World Cup•Getty ImagesHis 158-run fifth-wicket stand with Mominul gave Bangladesh the lead, but more importantly, it was an extra point scored against the New Zealand bowling attack that had been grounded down by the Bangladesh top five.Litton had a good year as a Test batter in 2021 as well, but Bangladesh’s poor results overshadowed that. He ended the year with 114 (his maiden Test century) and 59 against Pakistan, in Chattogram. That came after Bangladesh’s top order had sunk in the first hour of the match. Litton attacked, but it was a comparatively measured approach, with Mushfiqur holding up the other end. Litton almost repeated the effort in the second innings, but ran out of partners.That came after he had been dropped for the T20I leg of the series following a poor T20 World Cup, and he was asked to play first-class cricket instead. He met his childhood mentor Nazmul Abedeen Fahim then, and discussed his game. Litton then headed to train in Chattogram before the rest of the squad had reached, and Bangladesh batting coach Ashwell Prince later said that Litton had worked on a slight issue he had with his stance.The difference in Litton’s form in T20Is and Tests could mean that, even at this stage in his career, he might have to take a decision on how many formats he plays. He forms a strong opening pair with Tamim Iqbal, when he is available, in ODIs, but perhaps for Bangladesh to do well in Tests in the coming years, Litton’s focus should be on that middle-order.Shakib Al Hasan has missed a lot of cricket of late, and neither he nor Mushfiqur are getting any younger. Perhaps Litton, with Test cricket as his focus, could be the man to step up.

England tumble into the void of Buttler’s thousand-yard stare after Labuschagne drop

Andrew Miller16-Dec-2021If Jos Buttler’s pupils were craters, then the entire England team could have tumbled into the void of his thousand-yard stare, after one of the most evocative errors ever committed to Ashes legend.Dropped catches are a fact of Test cricket, and an occupational hazard of wicketkeepers in particular – “you get that one chance and that’s what you’ll be judged on,” Matt Prior, Buttler’s England predecessor, said during BT Sport’s close-of-play analysis.And yet, some drops just carry more weight than others, be it the moment of the match, the magnitude of the occasion, the identity of the reprieved … or in this late, late instance, all three, as Marnus Labuschagne was horribly spilled under the floodlights, to deny James Anderson his first wicket of the Ashes, and to suck any hope that England had harboured of a late redressing of the first-day balance.It was, by any wicketkeeper’s standards, an irredeemable shocker. A regulation nick, at a comfortable height to Buttler’s right, and one that he ought to have swallowed – not least given the confidence with which his day had begun, thanks to a stunning leg-side grab to dismiss Marcus Harris off Stuart Broad.That earlier moment had been a perfectly choreographed marriage of footwork and hand-speed, as Buttler flung out his right mitt to prise England’s only new-ball breakthrough. And yet, by degrees, his ebullience ebbed, most notably through a separate – less ghastly but equally culpable – spill off Labuschagne, as he misjudged the pace of a glove down the leg side and was almost through his leap before the ball reached his hands.Related

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“He’s a human being,” Graham Thorpe, England’s assistant coach, said at the close. “It’s bit like being a goalkeeper. You can keep magnificently throughout the day, but if you drop a catch, it gets highlighted. But we’ll get around him and try to be philosophical about it as well, because I think you have to be. At the end of the day, we’re playing a game of cricket.”Perhaps it’s too soon to pronounce Buttler’s drop as the moment that the Ashes were lost. But if, as you might expect from a side that has won 10 of its last 11 home fixtures against England, Australia were to grind this latest formidable start into another imposing finish and a
2-0 series lead, then posterity is sure to replay his agonising miss, time and time again, until it is grooved into the sport’s annals.Just ask Ashley Giles, who dropped Ricky Ponting at square leg on this very ground in 2006-07 – an error which could not be held directly responsible for the horrors of England’s final-day collapse, but which set in motion a chain-reaction of Australian recovery for the remainder of the match. Or how about Thorpe himself, whose reprieve of Matthew Elliott at Headingley in 1997 holds a similarly grim fascination for those of a ghoulish bent?”Everyone who’s played this game and drops a catch is always disappointed,” Thorpe added. “For Jos, it’s going to hurt tonight but he’s going to have to get out of bed and come again, and enjoy his day tomorrow, because that’s what Test cricket is all about.”And yet, it’s not just Buttler who will have to come again because, by the close, England’s collective morale was through the floor. The day had started with Australia’s captain Pat Cummins being pinged as a Covid close contact – a drama that gave rise to momentary parallels with another fateful pre-toss incident at Edgbaston in 2005. Instead, the day ended with Cummins’ deputy (and predecessor) Steven Smith ensconced in a 45-run stand with his bat-alike Labuschagne, and primed to cash in on what has already proven to be an unforgiving deck.Buttler reacts after dropping Labuschagne for the first time•Getty ImagesThe moment looks likely to matter all the more, because in the absence of Mark Wood – the one man who could have bludgeoned a way through these conditions – the sameness of England’s five-pronged right-arm seam attack has been exposed, exactly as happened to their four-pronged right-arm seam attack in the same contest four years ago.And given that the first three of those bowlers – Anderson, Stuart Broad and Chris Woakes – were unchanged from that original floodlit contest, it probably shouldn’t have come as a massive surprise.”I thought we stuck at it well,” Thorpe said. “I thought they played particularly well in those first few sessions, but obviously in Adelaide, it’s a good toss to win. Throughout the day, the run-rate didn’t go too far. But we’d have obviously loved to have more wickets down at the end of the day.”But just as Anderson had briefly ignited that 2017-18 match with a memorable spell under the lights, so the circumstances stacked up this time around, whereby England had one shot at redemption at the end of an arduous day. As ordained from the outset, twilight arrived along with the second new ball, and there was just enough nibble in the conditions to give England hope of a flurry of late breakthroughs – the sort of jackpot that could have justified their earlier focus on bowling dry, rather than striving for breakthroughs.Then Buttler dropped his clanger, and it was as if England had set themselves a massive great mammoth trap, only to watch their big beast trot harmlessly over their meticulously prepared pit of wooden stakes, and away to graze in the neighbouring pasture.Buttler’s diving catch saw off Marcus Harris in the first session•Getty ImagesFor the onlooking Prior, however, the moment was especially culpable because he felt it had been telegraphed by Buttler’s sluggish body language in the build-up to England’s final push.”Everyone thinks it’s your hands that get you a catch. It’s not, it’s your footwork,” Prior noted. “You’ve got to do the work with your legs, and then your hands just follow.”There were a couple of takes down the leg-side where [Buttler] had a dive and a bit of a fall and a flop. That’s lazy wicketkeeping. If he was on it in the first over the day, he would have been hop-skipping across, and would probably have stayed on his feet without diving.”It’s an agonising challenge now for Buttler to regroup from here and put in the performance that can both restore his own standards, and lift the levels of the men around him. It’s well known that he took some persuading to pitch in for the Ashes, amid the pressures of touring during the pandemic, but ultimately he did so because everything about his recall to the Test team, back in 2018, has been leading up to this point.He’s a proven England matchwinner, an indisputable legend of the white-ball game, and a player who only last month was belting most of Australia’s Test attack all around Dubai in a contemptuous onslaught at the T20 World Cup. For a split-second in the first Test at Brisbane, he channelled that same belief and focus into a spirited 39-run counterattack. But by the second innings of that dispiriting team performance, his joie de vivre had dissipated and he was back to poking uncertainly in the channel outside off.And now, here he is, snatching at England’s most priceless chance of an Ashes lifeline, as if taken by surprise by the bounce of the new ball and the sudden effectiveness of England’s greatest fast bowler in helpful evening conditions. It’s a dichotomy that encapsulates the wider failings of the team of which he is a central personality. And if a player of such proven stature as Buttler can’t raise his game for the clutch moment of the Ashes, what hope the wider team?

For too long it’s appeared as if touring Pakistan is the last thing a Western cricketing nation wants to do; this series has the power to change all that

Danyal Rasool03-Mar-2022Take a stroll through the streets of Lahore, Islamabad or Karachi, and the eye test bears out what the numbers tell you. Young people throng the streets, choke roads, shops and public spaces in their thousands. There’s a vibrancy, but, inevitably, also a kind of chaos that can oscillate between uplifting and panic-inducing. Pakistan is, after all, one of the faster-growing countries of the world, the population rapidly approaching a quarter of a billion. It is also among the youngest, with the average age under 23.That may carry all sorts of demographic implications, but for cricket at this present moment, one of them is startling: most Pakistanis weren’t alive the last time an Australian cricket team arrived on these shores to play international cricket.Related

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That might explain the unique atmosphere the arrival of a side led by Pat Cummins in Islamabad appears to have generated. It was in 1998 that a Mark Taylor-led side last came to Pakistan to play a three-Test series, one that’s taken on a larger-than-life form in the imaginations of those old fogies – by Pakistan standards – who still recall that somewhat drab affair. By the end of that series, it felt like Pakistani spirits had been all but broken, even if Sir Donald Bradman’s record somehow wasn’t.The world has changed dramatically in the intervening 23 years, and Pakistan even more drastically so. The country’s population has grown by nearly 100 million people. A new format of cricket has been invented, and subsequently, become dominant. It is so long ago, for heavens sake, that Shoaib Malik hadn’t even made his debut then, and Shahid Afridi made his Test debut in the third of that series. It’s practically ancient.Cummins himself alluded to the notion that his side’s presence here was about a little more than just cricket. “The whole previous generation of Australian teams didn’t get to experience Pakistan so we feel really lucky and fortunate that we are the first team to be back playing in Pakistan,” he said in a candid, self-aware reflection to the media. “It’s great that we are playing over here. I think this will be a tour at the end of our career we’ll look back on and think that was really special. As much as anything the way we’ve been looked after with the security presence, we’ll probably never experience anything like that in our lives. Great life experience, really proud and happy to be experiencing Test cricket over here. Hopefully there’s plenty more of it in the future.”It is perhaps tedious to rehash the off-field significance of a touring side visiting Pakistan, but it remains pertinent because, frankly put, it’s appeared for too long as if that’s the last thing a Western cricketing nation wants to do. Less than six months earlier, New Zealand were here in this very same city to play a landmark tour of their own, only to pull out citing security concerns on the day of the first game. Australian cricketer Ashton Agar’s partner received a threat, ultimately dismissed as a hoax, in the last few days, and the security presence around the Australian team hotel is extensive.But all that only establishes the dazzling opportunity this is for Pakistan cricket to make the most powerful off-field statement since 2009. Australia were the only side to reject a tour to Pakistan even before the terror attack on the Sri Lanka cricket team.Mark Taylor scored 334 in the drawn Test in Peshawar in 1998•AFPIn 2002, war was raging in neighbouring Afghanistan and drawing ever closer in Iraq when Australia decided they didn’t want to tour Pakistan. It was Australia then who set the template for what would be Pakistan’s home post-2009, when they dragged Pakistan out to the UAE. For those young enough to remember the UAE as something of a Test fortress for Pakistan, that 2002-03 tour was a different world. The nadir of that truly dismal two-Test series was a two-day Test, its brevity failing to compensate for its horror as far as Pakistan were concerned. It would be immortalised in two numbers for a generation of Pakistani fans: 59 and 53.If the current incarnation of that Australian side now sits in the heart of Islamabad – replete with first-choice superstars – gearing up for a full, three-format series, Pakistan may genuinely begin to believe the low of 2009 and the war on terror may, at least, be consigned to the past as far as this nation’s cricket is concerned. This visit of Australia kickstarts what should be a bumper home year for cricket in Pakistan, with New Zealand and England, two sides who pulled out last year to much criticism, set to visit in the autumn. Pakistan has not seen a home year like this since the 1990s.The relatively unfamiliar Pakistani conditions for the visiting side add an extra layer of intrigue to a series Pakistan has been clamouring for since as long as they can remember. At a time when Test cricket repeatedly wrestles with existential crises every time there’s a dull session in England or a wicket turns too much on the first day in India, Rawalpindi is officially sold out for all five days. There’s a panoply of angles that should make this series particularly delicious viewing, and cricket afficionados may rightly point out the quality of the cricket should, stripped of all context, be enough to justify these levels of excitement.But, with the vague, unreliable memories of the five-year-old that I was in 1998, I can recall the stifling drudgery with which Mark Taylor plodded along towards his triple-century, and Australia racked up 599 for 4 in 174 overs sitting on a 1-0 lead in a series they would go on to win by that very margin (until that point, only Pakistan’s third home series loss since 1980). 1-0 scorelines can be just as dreary in cricket as they are in football sometimes, so I’d insist I have it on good authority that a visit of Australia doesn’t magically make for exciting cricket.But a lot of growing up can happen in 23 years, especially if you happen to spend them in Pakistan. That’s why, as the newly minted Benaud-Qadir trophy shimmers on the eve of the series, Pindi, in unison with Pakistan, pulses with cautious excitement. Who knows if the cricket will really be good, but Pakistan knows that the fact there’s any cricket at all is very good indeed.

Following the departure of England’s incumbent, ESPNcricinfo runs the rule over Root’s potential successors

Andrew Miller15-Apr-2022Joe Root has announced his resignation as England’s Test captain, after five years in the role, in which time he has overseen more games, more wins and more defeats than any of his predecessors. But with England winning just one of their last 17 matches, and with no permanent appointments at the ECB to decide on his successor, his departure leaves the team in unprecedented chaos. Here is a rundown of the likeliest candidates to step into the breach.

Ben Stokes

Ben Stokes’ only Test as captain ended in defeat•Getty ImagesIn moments of indecision, England tend to revert back to their age-old habit of copying what Australia do. And with the very notable recent exception of Tim Paine, that has tended to revolve around picking the team first then giving the leadership to the best player therein. And so, assuming he is sound in mind and body after the travails of the winter, Ben Stokes is the most obvious man for the role, seeing as he is the only player other than Root himself who is guaranteed a game in the midst of this chaotic merry-go-round.The case against his accession is manifold. The most surface-level concern right now is his fitness record. Stokes was put through the wringer this winter, first in Australia, where his rush to return from a career-threatening finger injury led him to take the field with his usual wholehearted enterprise but without the requisite conditioning to back up his methods – and then in the Caribbean, where he was supposed to be limiting his bowling after a side strain, but ended up being England’s most-used seamer in the series, and is currently out of action until May due to a knee injury.And that leads onto the other concern – the more broad mistrust of talismanic English allrounders being given the keys to the citadel. Neither Ian Botham nor Andrew Flintoff had much joy as England captain in their brief stints at the helm, with both men all too easily taking the view that they, and only they, could be trusted to dig England out of whichever hole they had landed. Stokes has a similar tendency towards the superhuman, when sometimes quiet functionality is all a given situation requires. And yet, the fact that he has never coveted the job perhaps suggests he’ll be better at tempering his own expectations of incessant heroism. He’s certainly the consummate team man, which will help his cause no end.

Stuart Broad

Stuart Broad has experience of captaining England, albeit in a different format•ICC/GettyWhat, exactly, did England achieve with their binning-off of Stuart Broad and James Anderson in the Caribbean? If they wanted to prove that England’s oldest stagers were more the problem than the solution to the Test team’s flatlining standards, then they failed miserably in that objective, with both men emerging with their credentials enhanced following some unrelenting toil for their stand-ins, Chris Woakes and Craig Overton in particular.Perhaps it was intended more like a GSCE science experiment – what happens if we withdraw water from our control batch of cress? – but given that Root’s post-Grenada claims of a “positive dressing-room atmosphere” have now culminated in his resignation, you do wonder if the stage is set for a similar reverse-ferret from the selectors (not that there are any actual selectors in this crazy maelstrom, but the catch-all term still applies…)Either way, Broad has already made his case for the captaincy. Whether intentionally or not, his 15 minutes’ worth of truth-bombs on the first day of the Sydney Test were more inspiring than anything that actually took place on the field of play in that benighted campaign. After proving his enduring worth, even at the age of 35, with England’s first five-for of the series, Broad laid out nothing less than a manifesto for the reboot of England’s Test fortunes: stop planning for tomorrow, start focusing on today. If a player performs, let him “own the shirt”; if he doesn’t, expect him to work for it. And for God’s sake, start scoring some runs…His address awakened a dormant truth about a Test team that still has at its disposal four of its greatest players of all time: the solution to their current troubles may lie deeper within.Broad is already two years older than Bob Willis was in 1982, the last time England picked a fast bowler as captain. But he’s still four years shy of his sidekick Anderson, and besides, it’s been 11 years already since Broad was considered worthy of the T20 leadership. He probably ought to have been given the caretaker captaincy in the Caribbean, just to guard against the inevitable listlessness that coloured that campaign, but with the ECB in such a state of turmoil that there may yet be no permanent executives in office come the start of the New Zealand series, there’s a strong case for a management buy-out. Leave the cricket side of things to the guys who’ve been automatic picks for 15 years, and let their wisdom infuse into the whole set-up.

Rory Burns

Rory Burns captained Surrey to the Championship in 2018•Getty ImagesOne of the curious features of the ECB’s production-line approach to their Test cricketers is that the very best candidates for captaincy have next to no experience when they land the top job. Alastair Cook was the first to suffer from this scenario when he took over from Andrew Strauss in 2012, while Root himself admitted his nickname had briefly been “craptain”, after an underwhelming stint in his early days as a pro at Yorkshire.And so, there’s unquestionably a case to be made for handing the reins to a proven County Championship-winning captain – not to mention a player whose own efforts with the bat in that 2018 season were so far and away the best in the country – by runs scored and minutes batted – he was immediately drafted into the England team as Cook’s replacement as opener.On the flip side, however, few players have seen their stock fall quite so dramatically as Rory Burns this winter. He remains England’s only debutant since 2018 to average more than 30 – a shocking indictment in itself – but after arriving in Australia as one of Root’s key lieutenants, Burns was burnt alive in the heat of the Ashes battle. His first-ball duck at Brisbane was one of the iconic horrors of the winter, and as his form and technique deserted him, so the mutterings began about his sullen attitude in the dressing-room and his failure to provide the senior-player support that might have been expected of him.Had it not been for the dropping of Stuart Broad and James Anderson in the Caribbean, Burns’ absence would surely have been the main talking-point of that tour. And while England hardly covered themselves in glory in his absence, Zak Crawley did make a hundred, and Alex Lees did show ticker in adversity twice in their series-settling loss in Grenada. And as Burns himself put it earlier in the month, “I think I have to get back in the side first” before pondering any higher honours.

Alex Lees

Alex Lees captained England Lions in Australia•Getty ImagesIt’s a thoroughly left-field notion, and it surely will not happen, but given how much value the ECB has placed in its pathways in recent times, is it out of the question that they might promote Alex Lees, the England Lions captain in Australia, and now their senior incumbent opener (given that Zak Crawley, a shoo-in for the captaincy in years to come, is clearly not ready to be thrown to the wolves just yet)? Yes, it probably is – although England’s Test cricket has arguably not been at such a low ebb since 1988-89, so it would be fully in keeping with the current 1980s vibe for the selectors to go the full Chris Cowdrey.Lees did emerge with some credit in the Caribbean. A tally of 126 runs at 21 doesn’t exactly scream of his aptitude, but he did outscore England’s top nine in both innings in Grenada, and has taken that confidence straight back onto the county circuit with a statement performance in his first outing of the summer against Glamorgan – carrying his bat for an unbeaten 182.Unlike Burns, however – or even Somerset’s Tom Abell, arguably the most accomplished pure leader on the county circuit – Lees is not even his club captain at Durham (that honour belongs to another Ashes-disaster cast-off, Scott Borthwick, and what a story that would be!)

Sam Billings

Sam Billings has captaincy experience with Kent and Oval Invincibles•PA Images via Getty ImagesIt’s a measure of how far England have fallen that a player who, at the turn of the year, was 90 minutes away from boarding a flight back to the UK, ended up driving 500 miles and nine hours to make his Test debut in the final match of the Ashes, but has emerged from the Ashes rubble as a viable captaincy candidate. That prospect was stepped up a notch after his first-innings 29 at Hobart (yes, things are that desperate …), then receded somewhat after his flaccid flick to mid-on in the final-day collapse. But in between whiles, Sam Billings carried himself with composure, most particularly behind the stumps, where his sheer glee at being involved was radiated across England’s fielding effort – a devastating counterpoint to Jos Buttler’s self-absorbed misery of the first four games.In terms of his actual credentials, Billings is a curious case. He’s been around the England set-up for seven years now, having made his white-ball debut amid the post-World Cup reboot in 2015, but has played just 58 games out of a possible 185 – the sort of record that would be fittingly augmented by a one-off Test cap. Either way, that familiarity meant he was able to saunter into the dressing room as an old lag, and “add a bit of experience around the group” while placing his arm around a few battle-weary shoulders as well – including, you presume, his young team-mate Crawley, whom he has skippered at Kent since 2018.In between injury, England and IPL call-ups – and despite some heat from one or two of the more county-militant members – Billings has a decent record in the role, having helped to keep the club in the Championship top flight, while taking them to the Blast title last summer too.

James Vince

James Vince made his maiden England hundred against Pakistan last summer•Getty ImagesSpeaking in the wake of Hampshire’s crushing victory over Somerset in the opening round of the County Championship, James Vince described the prospect of him taking over from Root – more than four years after his last Test appearance – as “extremely out there”. And yet, that’s pretty much where England are at with their options right now. Whichever route they take is going involve taking a plunge of some description or another. And at least in Vince, you’d be pretty sure of what you were getting.For those who haven’t been paying attention to one of the great nearly careers of recent times, a Vince recall would entail rich promise each and every time he came to the crease, intermittent gold-dust when his timing and placement came to the fore, and more than a few flighty drives to the cordon – it would be like appointing a proxy for Crawley, in fact, but at the age of 31, he’s got experience in spades, and there are surely worse ideas to countenance. Paul Farbrace, for one, believes his record of 548 Test runs at 24.90 could have been far better if England had stuck with him.As a bonus, Vince is probably in charge of the best county team on the circuit right now. Asked last week if there was any area to improve after Hampshire’s emphatic win, he responded: “I’m not sure there is.” Confidence is infectious…

Jos Buttler

Jos Buttler walks off after being dismissed hit wicket at Adelaide•PA Images via Getty ImagesSurely, surely, there’s no way back for Jos Buttler after his ghastly display in the Ashes? It wasn’t simply that his form fell off a cliff in Australia, with scruffy glovework and over-awed batting, it was the manner in which it was bookended by his white-ball form that was the most revealing aspect. His scintillating strokeplay in the T20 World Cup has given way to similarly domineering form for Rajasthan Royals at the IPL, as if he’s simply drawn a curtain around his red-ball mindset and shot a bolt through its head.Perhaps, perhaps, that Ashes showing was indicative of other factors – the family pressure of lockdown lifestyle, the sense that all was not well within an outclassed squad, the huge expectation of tailoring his game at such short notice to a completely different format. When Buttler was at his best as a Test option in 2018-19, the team was built around him to a far greater degree, with a glut of allrounders to free up his attacking approach, rather than leave him second-guessing himself in the midst of another collapse. Never say never, but he is Eoin Morgan’s heir apparent in the white-ball side, so it would be a very England approach to try to marry up the two formats once again at this critical juncture.

Signings of Pollard, Narine adds experience to depth as county seeks to emulate 2003 title

Matt Roller08-Jun-2022The Kia Oval is described as ‘The Home of T20 Cricket’ on advertisements around South London, a strapline which nods not only to the strong crowds that the Vitality Blast attracts in Kennington but also to Surrey’s status as the first county to truly embrace the format.They were the Twenty20 Cup’s inaugural champions back in 2003, and reached Finals Day in each of the first four seasons. It feels like an anomaly that they have only reached the knockout stages four times in the last 15 years, a bizarrely poor record for a club with such deep resources.This year, in the competition’s 20th season, they look set to put that right. Along with Lancashire, they are one of two unbeaten teams in the country, with four wins and a no-result from their first five games, and the depth of their squad is unrivalled. Even with Ollie Pope and Ben Foakes away on Test duty, Rory Burns and Gus Atkinson cannot get in the side while Jordan Clark and Dan Moriarty have played only once each.Back in the early years, Ali Brown starred with the bat and Nayan Doshi with the ball, but there were contributions throughout a dynamic, versatile squad, with Adam Hollioake, Rikki Clarke and Azhar Mahmood all used as genuine allrounders. The current side bears more than a passing resemblance: in home games against Gloucestershire and Hampshire last week, their side featured eight bowling options and had so much batting depth that Jamie Smith – the talented young wicketkeeper-batter – was due to come in at No. 9.It is a substantial turnaround from their fifth-placed finish last year which saw them miss out on the quarter-finals. They used 21 players last season with availability presenting major issues and while England’s ODI series in the Netherlands will see them lose Sam Curran, Jason Roy and Reece Topley, they look significantly better-equipped to cope this time around.Curran has been the star man to date as both their leading run-scorer and wicket-taker while filling two crucial roles in the side: he has taken the new ball, nipping the ball around in helpful early-summer conditions, and has batted at No. 3 with complete licence to go hard, evidenced by a strike rate of 170.31 when facing spin.Kieron Pollard and Sunil Narine are Surrey’s T20 overseas players•Getty Images for Surrey CCCBut the biggest impact has been the addition of three Caribbean-born players with over 1,250 T20 appearances between them: Chris Jordan, who returned to his old club over the winter as T20 captain after nine seasons with Sussex, and two undisputed legends of the shorter formats in Sunil Narine and Kieron Pollard, long-time Trinidad and West Indies team-mates.Narine, playing county cricket for the first time, has started remarkably. His 16 overs to date have cost 76 runs including only three boundaries, with teams simply looking to play him out; in the win against Hampshire last week, he hit 52 off 23 balls from No. 6, including 22 off 5 against Mason Crane’s legspin.Pollard has been quieter, with two brief innings, one wicket and a superb catch his only contribution to the scoreboard and a minor knee injury limiting his involvement. But when he has played, his impact as a senior player has been obvious, in regular discussion with bowlers from mid-on and with his partners while batting.

What a catch from @KieronPollard55

The celebration isn't too bad either #Blast22 pic.twitter.com/NlAB3G0m68

— Vitality Blast (@VitalityBlast) June 2, 2022