‘I certainly have ambitions to continue’ – Jos Buttler on England future after tough T20 World Cup

Jos Buttler has expressed hope that England’s T20 World Cup semi-final defeat to India will not mark the end of his international career, though he acknowledged there are no guarantees of selection for the upcoming white-ball series in July.

Buttler endured a difficult campaign at the World Cup, scoring just 87 runs across eight innings, and has managed only one half-century in his last four ICC tournaments. However, with 18 months still remaining on his ECB central contract, he remains optimistic about his chances of featuring when England host India for five T20Is and three ODIs during the home summer.

“I hope so. I don’t know. Obviously I had a poor tournament, which is disappointing, but I’ve been playing some of the best cricket of my [career] in recent years, so hopefully I can get back to playing my best. I certainly have ambitions [to continue playing for England] but no longer being a captain, I’m not a selector and whatever, so what will be will be. Yeah, we will see,” said Buttler on his podcast ‘For the Love of Cricket’.

Buttler added that he spent a week in the mountains with his family in France to switch off from cricket after returning from the World Cup. He is set to travel back to India on Saturday to begin preparations for the IPL season with Gujarat Titans.

“I couldn’t have been further away from cricket, which for me at the time was just perfect. It’s exactly what I needed. Obviously the tournament didn’t go personally how I’d have liked it to go, and I just felt like I needed some space from cricket and not to think about the game, and I could not have been further away from cricket where I was in that week,” said Buttler.

“It was really refreshing – I really enjoyed it, a complete sort of release. And slowly but surely, I’d say at the start of this week, [I am] just starting to reflect a bit and have a few thoughts about what’s important to me and my cricket, and why it probably didn’t go quite as I would’ve liked. There’s elements [to what went wrong] that I actually don’t really know exactly. For all your best intentions and hard work and efforts to perform, it just didn’t work, and sometimes that’s okay as well. That’s something I’ve had to realise. It wasn’t for a lack of effort. It just didn’t quite happen,” he added.