Their Natural Game
Featuring Jos Buttler
What is a player’s “natural game”? Perceptions are formed generally by what we see. The shorter the game, the faster the scoring is, and the more people are watching. However, the shorter the game, the more compelled you are to score quickly. Batters don’t fear losing their wicket in a T20 anywhere near as much as they do in Test cricket. Conversely, they fear the dot ball way more in a T20 than a Test match. In T20s, there is no doubt that a 40-ball 30 is a worse innings than a first-ball duck. Scoring too slowly while facing a lot of balls puts undue pressure on the rest of your team and is potentially match-losing, whereas a first-ball duck lets someone else come in to have a swing without significantly increasing your team’s chances of being bowled out.
Because people watch more T20 (and some still watch more Fifty50) their perceptions are formed on that. But, you have to score quickly in T20 and thus can’t actually “express” yourself, to use another term favoured by commentators. You don’t have the choice of playing your natural game. It is the old traditional game where you bat until you are out, rather than batting until your overs are over that lets you do it. Batting all day for 86 not out is expressing yourself just as much as 38 off 17 balls is. And yet, if you mostly watch short games, you will inevitably think that a player’s natural game is faster scoring than it actually is.
There is a clear correlation (yet to be statistically proven) between scoring rates and love received in cricket. Generally the faster you score, the more the fans love you. Shahid Afridi is almost certainly at the top of Pakistan’s cricket fan’s love-o-meter. He is certainly well ahead of the many players who scored more Test runs for Pakistan. And, yet, scoring at a more measured rate and getting out less often normally helps you make more runs and potentially win more games, certainly in the “format” that allows you to express yourself more. As an aside, I don’t understand why we refer to Test (and first-class) cricket as a “format”. It is the greatest game that humans have invented and calling it a “format” makes it sound like a slide on a PowerPoint presentation.
A case in point is Jos Buttler. Buttler made his senior debut in 2009 and the numbers here will all refer to men with 5 000 runs since 2009. Buttler is one of the very fastest scorers in the history of the one-day game. Since 2009 there are 124 men with 5 000 List A one-day runs and only Glen Maxwell, with 121.95, has a higher strike-rate than Buttler’s 116.92. His T20 strike-rate of 145.89 is also elite. He is just outside the top 10% in T20s coming in at 12th place of the 116 men with 5 000 runs since 2009. He last played a first-class match in January 2022, and it seems very unlikely that he will play another one. His strike-rate in first-class cricket, where he has more opportunity to “express” himself, is fairly quick at 57.20. This is above average, but far from elite. He is placed 177th out of the 479 batters with 5 000 first-class runs since 2009. He just sneaks into the top 37% of first-class strike-rates. To put that into perspective, the likes of Dimuth Karunaratne and Joe Root are just ahead of him on the list ; high quality players but not known as having a “natural game” of extreme fast scoring. Are you sure that Buttler’s natural game is extremely fast scoring?
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