Survival instincts show white-ball star is coming of age

single-minded approach suggests Buttler is beginning to understand what it takes to thrive in the Test arena

It was an incongruous sight. Jos Buttler, one of the most extraordinary limited-overs batsmen in the world, had taken 31 balls over his first three runs at Emirates Old Trafford, the resplendent stroke play giving way to austere defence and meticulous leaving of the ball.

Beginning his innings in this way is not the allure of Buttler in Test cricket. The appeal of Buttler has always been the idea that he could transfer his buccaneering style into the five-day game. Yet, for all the fantasies that he could bat like an English Adam Gilchrist in Tests – in strike rate, if not in average – Buttler scores considerably slower in Tests than Matt Prior, and has a strike rate of 13 less than South Africa’s Quinton de Kock.

The idea of what Buttler could be thuds into the reality of how his best Test innings have come. Only two of his 24 Test innings over 40 – one being his 85 on debut – have come at a strike rate exceeding 80.

When he has begun innings in the spirit of the words scribbled in felt-tip pen on the top of his bat handle – “F--- it” – it has seldom been a template for Test runs.

“I can’t think of any times I’ve played well in Test cricket and gone out and been really aggressive in the way I do in the white-ball game,” Buttler reflected in February. “In white-ball cricket it might look like risky shots but it doesn’t feel like a risk because of the way you break down the probabilities of the game. The same is the case in Test cricket – it is about risk-management.”

This management of risk led Buttler to begin his innings in the third Test in a way that is almost the antithesis of Buttler the white-ball cricketer. Circumstances – his own elevation to six to enable England to play five bowlers while Ben Stokes played as a specialist batsman, entering the crease at 122-4, the excellence of the West Indies’s bowling and his own poor form – led him to embrace a radically different approach. This was not a time for pyrotechnics, but Ollie Pope, Buttler’s partner, was initially far more proactive.

Never has Buttler taken so long as the 38 balls here to reach double figures in a Test match.

If he gave the impression of being a man out of form, Buttler’s early-innings adhesiveness also reinforced his commitment to Test cricket. For all lovers of the five-day format, Buttler’s determination to crack the Test game is curiously

Tests and no half-centuries in 14 innings, averaging 23 in his past 15 Tests, and 18.6 since assuming the wicketkeeping gloves seven Tests ago. Abundant support from the captain and selectors can only conceal such numbers for so long.

Yet the way in which Buttler played, after riding out the start to his innings, was a reminder of the Test batsman he has been – just sometimes – for England. As he became more confident, here he was playing assertively and eager to score, yet also not bound by any notion of how he ought to play.

So when Buttler heaved Rahkeem Cornwall for two sixes in four balls it did not signal any great change in approach; Buttler scored only 26 from his next 63 balls. This was a day when, more than the runs he scored, what mattered was that Buttler survived.

The checked drive for two with which Buttler reached his half-century was a shot in the undemonstrative but effective spirit of this innings. As Buttler walked off, he had done more than safely take England to stumps. He had also held out the hope that his talents as a thrilling white-ball batsman could yet be harnessed to make him a reliable source of Test runs.

He embraced a radically different approach, as he realised this was not the time for pyrotechnics