Jos Buttler calls for better batting pitches in county cricket
Jos Buttler has suggested that better pitches for batting in the County Championship could help the England team solve their batting woes.
The most obvious point of difference between the two sides at the first Test between New Zealand and England at the Bay Oval has been the host’s ability and willingness to bat for extended periods of time on a slow pitch.
While England’s middle-order collapsed from 277-4 to 295-8 on the second morning, New Zealand batted for 201 overs before they declared on 605-9 in their first innings with BJ Watling and Mitch Santner recording the highest ever seventh wicket partnership for New Zealand in Test cricket.
Speaking after the fourth day, Jos Buttler, who himself was caught on the boundary playing an upper cut in his side’s first innings, has said that England’s batsmen can learn from the way the New Zealand batsmen went about their business.
Rory Burns won’t want to watch the replay of this shot.
— Wisden (@WisdenCricket) November 24, 2019
“New Zealand played a very patient game with the bat,” said Buttler. “They showed the value of that patient game of batting on flat wickets and setting your sights very high.
“We have to learn to be able to do that. You look at the top sides around the world on flat wickets and they get very, very big scores and bat for a very, very long time.
“That’s a big learning point for us. With the bat, just when you think you’re getting to a place where you need to be, there’s a lot more hard work to come to build those big scores.”
A shot that shows muddled thinking?pic.twitter.com/jrGQe7xSQu
— Wisden (@WisdenCricket) November 24, 2019
England finished day four three wickets down in their second innings, still 207 runs behind New Zealand. Of the three wickets to fall, the dismissals of Rory Burns and Dom Sibley could be put down to poor shot selection while Joe Root’s dismissal on the fifth morning again suggested muddled thinking.
“We have to learn about scoreboard pressure as well,” added Buttler. “If you have got those runs on the board, if you have put miles into the legs of batsmen who have to field for 200 overs, it puts those guys under a lot of pressure when they come out to bat 10 minutes later.
“Scoreboard pressure is massive. If we had made 450-500-plus in the first innings, it would have been a completely different outlook for the team batting second.”
It was put to Buttler that England bowlers could benefit from using the Kookaburra ball rather than the Dukes Ball in the County Championship. The Kookaburra generally swings and seams less than its Dukes counterpart, and is the brand used in Tests played in New Zealand and Australia, where England have struggled in recent years. Buttler rejected that suggestion saying that “the product we have with Test cricket in England is up there with the best product in the world so I wouldn’t want to tamper with that very much.”
Buttler did, however, suggest that English cricket could benefit from better wickets for batting. “One thing potentially we can do in England is play on better batting wickets,” said Buttler. “The Dukes ball still offers the bowlers enough, especially in England if you get the overhead conditions. But we could look at playing county cricket on better batting wickets.
“But we have played a lot of Test cricket in different conditions over the past year where it’s been fast-forward cricket. We have to be adaptable. There’s some education for all of us as batters.”
Over the last five years, there has not been a siginificant difference between how hard it is to bat in New Zealand and Australian and English domestic cricket. The average first innings score in New Zealand’s Plunket Shield is 308 and 302 in Australia’s Sheffield Shield. The County Championship’s average first-innings score over the last five years is 309.
However, statistics suggest batting in the County Championship has got significantly harder in recent times. The average first innings score in the last two years of the County Championship is 282, falling from an average of 325 for the preceding three seasons, giving fewer opportunities to bat the longer periods of times they’re expected to more often in Test cricket.
Still, while flatter wickets might be an admirable aspiration, the reality of the English county schedule can make it hard to achieve. With the majority of Championship cricket played early and late in the season, preparing wickets that aren’t conducive is a challenge. The county schedule will be announced on Tuesday, 26 November. Buttler and the rest of the England cricket fraternity will be watching with interest.
