LONDON: Jos Buttler is refusing to accept his England career is over despite admitting he had a “poor tournament” at the recent T20 World Cup.
Widely regarded as one of the outstanding white-ball batsmen of his generation, Buttler managed just 87 runs in eight innings at the tournament as England reached the semi-finals before losing to co-hosts and eventual champions India.
“Obviously I had a poor tournament, which is disappointing,” Buttler, who remains on an England and Wales central contract, said on his For the Love of Cricket podcast with former England fast bowler Stuart Broad.
“But I have been playing some of the best cricket of my (career) in recent years, so hopefully I can get back to playing my best.
“I certainly have ambitions (to play for England again), but no longer being a captain, I am not a selector and whatever, so what will be, will be.”
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Buttler, 35, is set to play for Gujarat Titans in the upcoming Indian Premier League and hopes time away after the World Cup “up the mountains” in France with his family will leave him feeling reinvigorated.
“I couldn’t have been further away from cricket, which for me at the time was just perfect,” said Buttler. “It is exactly what I needed.”
“Obviously the tournament didn’t go personally how I would have liked it to go, and I just felt like I needed some space from cricket and not to think about the game, and I could not have been further away from cricket where I was in that week.”
Buttler, a member of England’s 2019 one-day international World Cup-winning team and also the skipper for their T20 triumph in Australia three years later, added: “It was really refreshing – I really enjoyed it, a complete sort of release, and slowly but surely, I would say at the start of this week, (I am) just starting to reflect a bit and have a few thoughts about what is important to me and my cricket, and why it probably didn’t go quite as I would’ve liked.
“There’s elements that I actually don’t really know exactly. For all your best intentions and hard work and efforts to perform, it just didn’t work, and sometimes that is OK as well.
“That is something I have had to realise. It wasn’t for a lack of effort, it just didn’t quite happen.”
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