Cricket: Buttler's skills mind-boggling

Jos Buttler's innings of 47 off 16 balls to set up England's win over New Zealand 11 days ago at Nottingham was enough to make you pause and contemplate whether the future of cricket had flashed before your eyes.

Sage, conventional cricketing advice like "keep a high front elbow", "show the bowler the maker's name" and "it's a side-on game" was clobbered by a kind of tennis-squash-baseball hybrid thwacking the ball to all parts of Trent Bridge. Crouching in front of his stumps with a still head, Buttler tore the visitors' bowling apart with double-handed forehands, drop shots and boasts - using a bat instead of a racquet. He helped pile on 76 runs in four overs; few of those runs came in an ordinary fashion.

The 22-year-old's repertoire of shot trickery is generating such fervour that an Indian Premier League chequebook must be waved near him soon (if the England and Wales Cricket Board allow it). Buttler doesn't always come off - there were a couple of streaky inside and outside edges in his 47 and his last two ODI scores have registered in binary code - but he is a threat which New Zealand have considered more than most ahead of their final Champions Trophy pool match tonight.

After Buttler's Nottingham vigil, New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum noted: "On a ground like this, with a player as destructive as him, there is no room for error. Any time a batsmen faces 16 balls and wins a man-of-the match, you know he's had a reasonable influence on the game."

Coach Mike Hesson says Buttler's eye - primed by a background as an exceptional schools racquet player - is hard to outwit.

His signature shots include "the ramp", "the scoop" and "the reverse scoop". "The ramp" has Buttler standing open-chested in front of the stumps, lifting a good length ball over the wicketkeeper's head, with the back of his bat almost flat to the ground. It mimics Tillakaratne Dilshan's "Dilscoop".

"The scoop" is similar but is played to a full length delivery where a ball pitched up outside off stump ends up heading in the direction of fine leg. It is designed to beat defending skippers who stack fielders in positions to cut off shots straight down the field. "The reverse scoop", as was played in the 22-run Kyle Mills over in Nottingham, has Buttler pulling out of "the scoop" mid-stroke when he realises the ball is shorter and wider. Instead he flicks it almost back-handed over short third man.

He could always opt for the late cut but, what the hell, even cricket needs the odd circus act. His hand-eye co-ordination is mind-boggling.

"It's more our execution," Hesson says of his bowlers. "You don't mind if a guy reverse laps you over third man off a slower ball which you've landed. You can take that on the chin but if it is in areas you know he's strong then we've got to look at how we've executed.

"He's the sort of guy we want in early, so he has to make more decisions than normal. If we can manage that, we can put him under pressure."

Mind you, that ploy didn't work on one famous occasion when, as a schoolboy, Buttler was playing for King's College Taunton against King's Bruton. The 17-year-old and his partner put on a record opening stand of 340 in a 50-over national schools game. Buttler finished on 227 not out.

He was signed to Somerset and made his England T20 debut eight days shy of his 21st birthday. It prompted a prescient Phil Lewis, the director of cricket at Buttler's alma mater, to remark on the school website: "Cricket is a wonderfully simple game, but when it is played by people like Jos, he demonstrates a skill level that few people on the planet can emulate and that is why he has now gained the international recognition he deserves."