Jos Buttler pauses as he ponders the best word to describe the way he was recalled from a long Test exile nine months ago. He had just got off the plane after a record-breaking batting stint in the Indian Premier League when he was told.
He had not even played a Championship game when the phone rang. ‘It was very...’ he says, a smile spreading over his face as he settles on the word, ‘un-English’.
That is the thing about Buttler, though. There is something very un-English about him. Not in the quiet, calm, diplomatic way in which he talks, not in the trace of the gentle West Country accent that soothes his speech and not in the modesty he always displays. But in the way he plays cricket.
Jos Buttler was recalled by the England Test squad last year after a lengthy exile
He spoke to Sportsmail's Oliver Holt about his views on how cricket could change for good
He is a product of the age. English cricket, for so long wary of innovation and change, is suddenly giddy with the ways in which it might break free from its shackles. Buttler is the personification of the modern cricketer’s dash for liberation and expression.
Nearly six weeks into a year when World Cup fever will be focused on Lord’s and when the Australians, disgraced and diminished, will arrive to try to defend the Ashes, the prospect of sporting immortality looms ahead of Buttler as he sits in the foyer of England’s team hotel in St Lucia.
In an era that values the spectacular above all else, when younger fans prize fleeting, explosive moments above stubbornly-earned glories, Buttler is English cricket’s first new-age superstar, a player whose breathtakingly audacious ramp shots go viral on social media, a batsman whose aggression at the crease is so daring it crosses over into the wider public consciousness and extends cricket’s audience.
Buttler is a gentle man who speaks calmly and quietly but, when he has a bat in his hand, he is capable of stretching the boundaries of his sport.
He is an innovator with his batting, his ramp shot is a particularly eye-catching part of his game
He is Neymar bamboozling a defender with a rainbow flick. He is Nick Kyrgios hitting a winner with a tweener. He is Antonin Panenka with a dinked penalty, Odell Beckham Jnr with a one-handed catch, Sugar Ray Leonard with a bolo punch as a feint, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with a dunk, Sonny Bill Williams with a back-handed offload.
‘That’s one of the best bits about cricket,’ says Buttler.
‘The exploration side, playing around, experimenting in the nets. It feels like a great time for innovation in cricket. In any walk of life, people love new things. There will be sceptics and there will be guys who love it.
‘Innovation grabs the attention. You go back through the history of cricket and there are certain moments in time that grab you. Kevin Pietersen’s flamingo shot was one of those.
'I had heard coaches talking about it and then this guy’s just played this shot to Glenn McGrath and you think: “Oh my God, this guy’s incredible”. Some players are ahead of their time.
‘The demographic of the cricket fan at the moment means we need to engage more with younger fans. The world changes and we need to learn to adapt with that.
'Jason Roy took an incredible catch in the Bangladesh Premier League recently and it’s that kind of thing that captures the public imagination. I watched that and thought it was incredible.
‘Jonty Rhodes used to have that effect on me. I would watch him field and then go and fling myself around the garden pretending I was him. Making it cool is what you want.
'Cricket has a stigma of old men in white clothes playing cricket but readdressing that image to people who aren’t necessarily cricket lovers may go some way to making it cooler.
‘The Hundred has had a lot of criticism already but why can’t it be cool? When there is change, there are always sceptics who think it won’t work. I am sure someone at some point thought the iPhone wouldn’t take off. It’s going to be exciting and different and it will create talking points.’
South Africa's former fielding sensation Jonty Rhodes was an inspiration to Buttler growing up
It is only right that a player with Buttler’s lavish talent should find himself at the heart of both English cricket’s grand designs as they unfold in the months ahead and he and his one-day team-mates try to become the first England team to lift the World Cup before moving on to attempt to wrest back the Ashes in the embers of what could be a golden summer to rival any that has gone before.
Buttler, 28, is one of the key players in England’s ODI team which will go into the World Cup as favourites and, after he was recalled to the Test side in May, he became England’s leading run-scorer in the series against Pakistan and India and the second-highest in the triumph in Sri Lanka. His fortunes have dipped briefly in the West Indies but he is hardly alone in that in this England team.
The third Test began here at the Daren Sammy National Cricket Ground on Saturday and Buttler acknowledges that defeat in the Caribbean has changed the tone of anticipation for what lies ahead.
He is also aware that the team’s performance has reopened the debate about whether the long and short forms of the game are incompatible for those, like him, who are trying to master both.
There is an ideological war between traditionalists and innovators in cricket that even in good times lies close to the surface of the English game.
In bad times, such as the Test series loss to the West Indies that was confirmed by defeat in Antigua last week, players who embody change, adventure and free spirit of experimentation are shackled and paraded before us as fifth columnists.
If there was one central theme that emerged in the dissection of why England failed so miserably in a Test series they were expected to win easily, it was that their hopes had been undermined by an emptiness that had infiltrated their core and that this emptiness was a direct product of too much collaboration with and enthusiasm for, limited-overs cricket.
‘England are learning that a focus on Mickey Mouse white-ball cricket means you produce Mickey Mouse cricketers,’ Simon Heffer, the historian and political columnist, wrote.
The former England captain, Michael Vaughan, mined the same seam. ‘I don’t think we are prepared to bat ugly,’ he argued. ‘England’s batsmen want to look pretty.’
Buttler, England’s vice-captain, listens to these theories that he and his team-mates have been so seduced by the quick rewards and grand gestures of limited-overs cricket that their mentalities have become as flimsy as the straw canopies of the beach
