By John Ashdown/The Guardian

Jos Buttler is getting better at being invisible. The England wicketkeeper came into the Test side little more than a year ago with few doubts about his batting ability but questions over his skill with the gloves. This summer has seen something of reversal in those issues but the keeping concerns have been resoundingly answered in a more or less faultless summer behind the stumps as England regained the Ashes.
“It’s weird – as a wicketkeeper you’re trying not to be noticed,” he says. “I knew that was going to be my challenge. People were talking about my wicketkeeping and saying that stuff but I know I’m on the right track. I’m getting better, I’ve got loads of areas to improve but the less people are talking about you, probably the better job you’re doing. That’s a compliment in itself for wicketkeepers.”
The greater concern now is his form with the bat. Scores of 27 and seven in Cardiff, 13 and 11 at Lord’s, nine at Edgbaston and 12 at Trent Bridge for a series average of 13.16, lower than both Stuart Broad and Mark Wood. Buttler entered the Test arena with a blistering 85 from 83 balls against India last summer and had been a consistent lower-order threat for England until the arrival of the Australians and those numbers were not what anyone was expecting.
“I’ve obviously been really disappointed with my form with the bat,” he says. “I haven’t got a score and really contributed which is disappointing for me and obviously in international cricket you feel that need to be performing because in one sense you want to stay in the team. But when you start thinking like that, it’s really detrimental to actually staying in the team. You’ve just got to relax. “I feel maybe at times I’ve just been a bit too desperate to do well, almost tried too hard. But even though I haven’t contributed as I would have liked, I’ve still enjoyed the cricket just as much. You enjoy everyone else’s success and I’m certainly not going to let it take anything away from winning. It doesn’t mean I’m going to enjoy it any less or be any less proud of it.”
Next week’s fifth Test at the Kia Oval offers the chance for Buttler, in his words, “to feel like I’ve really done something in this series” but more than that it is an opportunity for the 24-year-old to reassert a grip on his place in the XI.
Tough trips to the UAE to face Pakistan and to South Africa to take on the world’s No1 side await this year – neither of which will be hospitable surroundings for a batsman out of form and under pressure. “There’s always going to be pressure on your place,” says Buttler. “It’s 11 cricketers. There’s always going to be other cricketers outside the team doing well.”
Now, though, there is a certain amount of pressure from within the side, with one of Buttler’s predecessors, Jonny Bairstow, coming into the team as an ordinary fielder and scoring as many Ashes runs in two innings as Buttler managed in six. The current incumbent, though, believes that worrying can only make the situation worse. “Early on, when I was playing the one-day stuff a few years ago and had a really poor start to my career, it was actually when I stopped worrying about getting dropped and about all the things that might go wrong that I started playing better,” he says.
“It can be hard to keep that mentality but I know that to play your best you can’t be worrying about getting dropped, because then you just go into your shell even more and play safe. I’ve just got to come out and play how I know I can play – that’s the way that you get the best out of yourself.”
A reality check is his preferred relaxation technique. “Sometimes you just need a realisation. It might be from your girlfriend or your mum and dad, just to remind you how lucky you are,” says Buttler. “I remember after we got one wicket on the first day at Lord’s and you sit there going: ‘What a terrible day.’ But you’re playing at Lord’s. In an Ashes series. Against some of the best players in the world. There are plenty of worse places to be. Those sort of things keep it real and make you realise how lucky you are – whether you’ve scored none or 150, you’re in a really privileged place.”
Buttler returns to his county, Lancashire, to play in their T20 Blast quarter-final against Kent on Saturday. Though the Test series at times seems to have been played at Twenty20 pace, he is hoping that the change of scene does him good: “It might be just exactly what I need.”
As Yorkshire – on the receiving end of 71 off 35 balls in Buttler’s only previous T20 game for Lancashire this season – can testify, that is one form of the game in which this wicketkeeper is unlikely to go unnoticed.