The Buttler sweeps up so perfectly!
If Sam Curran ’s posttea shower of sixes stole the headlines, don ’t forget Jos Buttler’s pre-lunch flurry of fours. Curran certainly didn’t.
When Rory Burns’s promising 43 ended with 15 minutes of the morning session to go, England were 89 for four and in danger of reliving the first T est at Galle by losing five wickets in the session.
Before the game, Joe Root had encouraged his side to take the aggressive option when possible. A nice idea, but less easy to put into practice. His vice-captain, though, had been paying attention.
Three balls from off - spinner Akila Dananjaya brought three fours, two from conventional sweeps, the third from a reverse. In the next over , Buttler swept left-armer Malinda Pushpakumara for two more. T wenty-five runs had flowed in two overs and Sri Lanka were back on the defensive.
At lunch, he had 38 from 32 balls, with 35 of his runs coming from sweeps, and England had 120. The mood had changed.
‘Jos came in and played the way we all know he can,’ said an admiring Curran. ‘He started sweeping and reverse-sweeping and running down (the wicket). It looked like they started to panic a bit.
‘After lunch he was reverse - sweeping every ball and their field was all over the place.
‘There’s a ball in that wicket that’s generally going to get you out, so you ’ve got to take risks when you can. Jos showed how good a player he is in terms of getting on top of the attack.’
Buttler has always been a selfless cricketer and his willingness to keep playing his shots was another piece of evidence for a bulging file.
On a pitch that has turned sooner and more sharply than Galle, it was a dangerous approach. But he also knew it was England’s best chance of quick runs, before the surface starts to spit and hiss like one of the local cobras.
By the time he brought up his sixth Test score of 50 or more since his return in May , he had faced only 50 balls. It was an innings that would not have been out of place in a one-day international.
White-ball cricket is precisely where some people thought Buttler should have stayed before national selector Ed Smith engi - neered his recall against Pakistan.
It was an inspired choice and far more than a hunch. Smith rea - soned that Buttler is a special player, regardless of the colour of the ball. It was the kind of simple logic cricket can sometimes scorn.
Having lived by the sweep, But - tler eventually perished by it, reversing Pushpakumara, who cleverly held one back , into the hands of Dimuth K arunaratne at backward point.
In all, 51 of his runs came from his 31 sweeps — a strategy that had seen Keaton Jennings to three figures in the second innings at Galle. England are not afraid of ramming home a point, as long as Sri Lanka are incapable of counter-acting it.
Buttler’s 63 took his tally since he was given another crack at Test cricket to 646 runs at 46. Next in the list across the same period is Root, with 488 at 32. Buttler is leaving his team-mates for dead.
Even more impressively, he was batting here at No 5 — a new role after spending his T est career in the heart of the lower-middle order at No 6 and 7. At Galle he would have batted at No3 had Moeen Ali been tired from bowling.
Moeen is often regarded as England’s utility man, but Buttler is not far behind.