Good afternoon, Tyers here, I hope you are having a peaceful and/or enjoyable Sunday, and thank you for joining us for this live blog of the one-day international match between West Indies and England in Antigua. The match at North Sound starts at 1.30pm and it’s an important opportunity for England to get their 50-over show back on the road after a pretty ordinary showing in the recent World Cup. Could be worse, mind you: West Indies failed even to qualify for the tournament.
Here is Tim Wigmore with some thoughts and some quotes from England’s Jos Buttler.
Jos Buttler will aim to give more attention to his batting and keeping during England’s white-ball tour of the Caribbean, after admitting that he found it hard to devote enough time to his personal performance during the World Cup.
“That’s a big learning for me – managing my own game is vital to the team and just finding different ways to do that to allow me to walk out in the middle with a clear mind,” said the England white-ball captain. “How I manage my time, I think it’s something I’d done really well up until that point in that World Cup.”
Buttler is trying “to find the right time and balance things out with my own game,” he explained. “Something I’ve always wanted to do in my career is strive for balance. Naturally, as captain, you take on extra responsibility, you’ve got more stuff to do deal with but I’ve enjoyed that.”
Phil Salt and Will Jacks will open the batting together. Buttler rejected suggestions that he could open the batting – a role he has performed to great effect in T20 internationals, where he averages 49.2 as opener, but has never done in ODIs.
“I have played nearly 180 ODIs and I have had great success in the middle order. It’s been my superstrength in this format of the game and I want to nail down on that even more.”
The England captain said that the poor World Cup defence had only increased his determination for the rest of his international career.
“I’ve got to use it as motivation and hunger to push myself and the team forward and take the learnings from that – use it as a positive experience to go into the rest of my career.”
“We have had one bad tournament. It’s been in a great place for a long time and you see the depth of talent of guys coming through and you want to help shape that period of white ball cricket. That’s something I feel responsibility and motivation for and individually I am always incredibly motivated to perform the best I can and reach my potential. Any time that you get challenged and get pushed back and people challenge that sort of thing it’s certainly lights a few fires and motivates you.”
With only five members of England’s World Cup squad – plus Brydon Carse, who was a replacement player – in the ODI squad, Buttler said it felt like a fresh start for the side.
“It’s certainly a bit of a new beginning. There’s some really exciting talent in this team – young guys eager to get their opportunities and perform.”
Despite the change in personnel and poor World Cup campaign, Buttler will give “very similar messages,” to the squad – retaining the aggressive approach that served England well from 2015-22 while emphasising the need to be adaptable too.
“You want to reinforce the way we want to play. Still a very positive and aggressive style of cricket but within that there is always a framework to move up and down gears, and give some guys some role clarity of where that fit into this team and the roles we want them to play.”
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