New Zealand all-rounder was at the support of his Rajasthan Royals teammate, Jos Buttler, who he hailed as the “best player in the world” following the opener’s cheap scores in the two T20I innings against India so far.
Buttler was handed England’s limited-overs full-time captaincy before the T20I series against India following Eoin Morgan’s retirement. However, things have not gone as desired for the new England captain and his side as they lost the first two matches of the three-game series against Rohit Sharma’s unit with Buttler himself underperforming, managing scores of 0 (1) and 4 (5).
Senior India pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar dismissed Buttler in both the matches. In the first one in Southampton, Kumar swung one big into Buttler and breached his defenses to hand him a golden duck; in the second match, at Edgbaston, Bhuvneshwar had Buttler nicking through to Rishabh Pant.
India have taken an unassailable 2-0 lead in the series with win by big margins of 50 runs and 49 runs. The third T20I will be played on Sunday at Trent Bridge.
James Neesham comes out in support of Jos Buttler
James Neesham, who played with Buttler at the IPL 2022 for Rajasthan Royals, threw his support behind the England captain. Reacting to a post by ESPNcricinfo, that highlighted Buttler’s scores of 0 and 4 in this series, Neesham said that these are just two innings and termed Buttler as the best batsman in the world!
Buttler was indeed in surreal form during the IPL 2022 – finishing as the Orange Cap winner with 863 runs with 4 centuries and 4 fifties in his way.
“He’s the best player in the world, it’s two innings. Talk about something else,” Neesham reacted
Here, check out Neesham’s tweet:
He’s the best player in the world, it’s two innings. Talk about something else
https://t.co/QZBMNWyYUB
— Jimmy Neesham (@JimmyNeesh) July 9, 2022
After the series loss in Edgbaston, Jos Buttler said the performance of his side was very disappointing and that the team was nowhere near than what he had expected of them. He lauded debutant pacer Richard Gleeson – who dismissed Rohit Sharma, Rishabh Pant and Virat Kohli – and Chris Jordan – who dismissed Hardik Pandya and Suryakumar Yadav – but felt the batting let his side down.
“Very disappointing. We didn’t play anywhere close to what we wanted and deserved to lose. The bowlers were excellent especially Gleeson and Jordan. Any time you lose three wickets in the powerplay it is hard to catch up. Not just the wickets but the guys he (Gleeson) got out, overall a fantastic debut. He has bowled fantastically well, CJ always bowls the pressure overs and the figures can sometimes cloud what he’s doing. We don’t have much time to reflect on it as the next game is tomorrow,” Buttler said.
