The Times Magazine 31hen I meet Jos Buttler, the
England wicketkeeper and
middle-order batsman, he is
dressed all in black and with
a black mask. Zorro, I think,
for seldom has the adjective
“swashbuckling” been more
aptly applied to a sportsman
than Buttler. He is the biggest-
hitting English batsman in
cricket history and, along with Ben Stokes, the
hero of the victorious Cricket World Cup team
a couple of summers ago.
If his cricket were an expression of his
personality, you’d expect him to be full of rapier
wit and unguarded opinions, and why not
rocking a Tyrone Power look too? As it turns
out, the noir outfit is the sports casual gear of
his sponsor Castore and the mask, of course,
Covid protection. Think of England big-hitting
all-rounders of the past, people like Ian
Botham and Freddie Flintoff, and you picture
men with a swaggering, indeed dominating
charisma. Tall, muscular, with limpid blue
eyes and the face of a male model, Buttler,
30, looks like a sporting superstar but acts like
the quiet bloke from accounts. Understated,
circumspect, he is the anti-Botham.
When we meet at Reed’s cricket school in
Cobham, Surrey, there is an entourage of four
sitting in on the conversation. I understand
immediately that this is not an environment
likely to encourage the divulgence of shocking
revelations.
It’s the same day that the England cricket
team are busy losing to India in the second
Test 5,000 miles away. Buttler isn’t with them
because he was sent home after the first Test,
which England won and in which Buttler had
scored quick runs and taken four catches.
The decision had nothing to do with his
performance but was a result of the English
Cricket Board’s (ECB) much questioned
resting policy to prevent player burnout,
as a consequence of spending too long in
bio-secure bubbles. His replacement was
Ben Foakes, and Buttler will return for the
five T20 matches beginning on March 12.
So I open with what in cricket they
call a loosener and ask him how he feels about
watching his team-mates play cricket on TV.
“I can watch it quite objectively,” he says.
“You’re not just watching as a fan.”
It’s a straight-bat answer. He fields most
questions as if they carry some hidden and
possibly lethal spin. I ask him if all the extra
isolation time and restriction of movement
makes playing in a bio-secure bubble more
psychologically demanding.
“I think the obvious challenge of the bubble
is the intense time in one place,” he says.
He needs time away from the game,
he explains, to recharge his batteries. Last
summer, he readily admits, he didn’t copewell when the England team were billeted
at hotels attached to the cricket stadia.
“You wake up and open your curtains
and there’s a cricket ground. And then you
come back and you’re sitting looking at the
cricket ground again. On the bad days it’s
tough to escape.”
He has escaped now, though, and if he’s
longing to be back with his pals in India, he
hides it well. He says he knows what it’s like
to get to a point of being overburdened with
stress, unable to perform to his best “and
just in need of a bit of a break”.Before he knows it he’s talking about
“player welfare in the bubble” and then,
inevitably, the game’s resting policy.
“I think the ECB stance has been to try
to prevent problems as opposed to deal with
them when they happen. Especially because
some players will naturally tell you, ‘Yep, I’m
fine. I’ll keep going.’ But actually to enforce a
break sometimes is the only way to manage
those problems.”
It’s a far cry from the old days, when
a Botham or a Boycott would have gone
raving mad if they were dropped for their
own mental health. But then cricket is no
longer in the old days. Back in the Seventies
and Eighties, cricket tours were more akin to
rock tours, with tales of epic drinking, high
jinks and groupies.
Today’s series are far more sober affairs,
meticulously planned by coaches and sports
scientists. Everyone is well aware that any
shenanigans are likely to end up, via a
watching smartphone, in the tabloids. So as
a result, there seems to be little forgiveness
for players who stray. Even friends.
One of the ushers at Buttler’s wedding in
2017 was the batsman Alex Hales. Hales was
banned for six matches in December 2018,
as punishment for his involvement in the
incident outside a nightclub in Bristol that also
included Stokes (who in court was found not
guilty of affray). Hales did not face a criminal
prosecution. A few months later he tested
positive for a recreational drug and he hasn’t
played for England since, duly missing out on
the World Cup squad. Asked what he thought
of the decision, Buttler once said, “As much as
you have friendships, these are the values that
we are bound by and have to follow.”
Buttler himself is married to his childhood
sweetheart, Louise, likes an occasional glass
of shiraz, meditates and has been trying to
teach himself the piano. But I wonder if he’s
envious of that earlier generation of cricketers
who lived by the credo of what happened on
tour stayed on tour.
“Sometimes you wish – not that you want
to go and party like some of them used to- just to relax and not have the pressure
of social media.”
Immediately he adds a qualification,
“But if you want the rainbow, you’ve got to
put up with the rain.” He points out that with
the increased scrutiny has also come more
revenue, more professionalism and improved
performances. And improved pay.
Buttler is said to be the England team’s best-
paid player, with a base salary of £1.25 million.
He also plays for the Rajasthan Royals in the
Twenty20 Indian Premier League, and last
year was paid almost £500,000 for three
months’ work. There is also sponsorship.
W
‘I FIND THAT MEDITATION
HELPS ME WITH MY
MINDSET GOING INTO
A CRICKET MATCH’
With Rajasthan Royals team-mate Ben Stokes, 2019Collecting his MBE for services to cricket, February 2020OPENING SPREAD: RICHARD LISTER FOR CASTORE (T-SHIRT, CASTORE.COM); GETTY IMAGES, BRYN LENNON/GETTY IMAGES. THIS PAGE: GETTY IMAGES, CAMERA PRESS Continues on page 39