budgetmeansbudget wrote:Durhamfootman wrote:budgetmeansbudget wrote:But in his second innings he didnt come in and have a slog, he played sensible test cricket for most of his innings, defend the good balls and try to score off the bad.
that's true enough. It isn't why he's in the team though. I think he's been selected to put the icing on an England innings.... which is odd because it feels like a while since England's top 6 have actually produced enough of a score for someone to put the icing on
Perhaps give him the gloves, and call him an all rounder in the Gilchrist role.
I personally don't see a great difference between the keeping ability of him and Bairstow, and Bairstow can then concentrate on batting coming in further up the order.
that would be different and perfectly acceptable if his keeping was up to scratch. That Bairstow has the gloves suggests that the management don't rate Buttler's glove work
I just think that the inclusion of Buttler as a luxury player indicates that England came into this series thinking that their top 6 batting would be okay for a team like Pakistan.
It suggests to me a certain arrogance about the whole team selection process (and which has been around for a while now, imo) that cannot have any foundation to it after the winter that they've just had. Even the selection of Bess..... they couldn't have the one they wanted, so they took a punt on the new kid, because it was only Pakistan they were playing.
And it isn't as if this attitude is unusual for England in recent years and it's an arrogance that is based on nothing... apart from their own over-inflated opinion of themselves