The season is around the corner... but first for Jos Buttler is the IPL

SIMON HUGHES: Buttler spoke to me for The Cricketer about his year. His first season for the Rajasthan Royals last spring helped him become a more consistent and rounded cricketer, particularly through his relationship with Shane Warne

The county season starts this Sunday, with champions Surrey playing the MCC in Dubai.

As usual it is marked by the publication of The Cricketer’s season preview, packed with detail and information about each of the 18 county teams taking part. Like most sides, Surrey have already been practising outdoors for some time - if you count ‘outdoors’ as nets covered by a large white marquee on the Kia Oval square. Other sides are practising in La Manga or out in Dubai.

It's a far cry from the days I played when you wouldn’t even report back to your county until April 1 and then did a week of lung-busting shuttles and burpees in a ‘leisure’ centre to dust off the winter cobwebs before getting into the (decidely-dodgy) early season nets a week later.  

A whole team of English players will be missing from the first few rounds of county matches, all en route to India for the IPL. It is an intriguing sign of the times that one, Jos Buttler, doesn’t even live in the county that he plays for - Lancashire - or the one he used to play for, Somerset. Buttler has set up home with his expectant wife Louise in Clapham (in an area nicknamed ‘Nappy Valley’) and with good reason.

The first time Buttler will be seen at Old Trafford, his ‘home’ ground, will be for England’s World Cup match against Afghanistan on June 18. The second time will be for the Ashes Test on September 4. It is hard to see how he will play for Lancashire at all this year (bar perhaps the Roses T20 match at Headingley on July 25). There is no four-day cricket at all between the end of the World Cup on July 14 and the start of the Ashes on August 1. 

^{Jos Buttler has a massive year ahead of him with England}

Buttler probably won’t mind. A lack of red-ball cricket did not seem to afflict him when he arrived back from the IPL last summer to play a prominent role in England’s Test team and register his maiden Test hundred.

Buttler spoke to me for The Cricketer and for the Analyst Inside Cricket podcast about his year. His first season for the Rajasthan Royals last spring helped him become a more consistent and rounded cricketer, particularly through his relationship with the Royal’s mentor Shane Warne. 

They make a slightly unlikely pairing, the supremely confident Aussie legend and the quietly spoken, unassuming Taunton lad, but they both love to discuss the game and have formed a strong bond.

They had just come off a successful golf outing against Rob Key and Ian Ward in Surrey when we met on Monday. And it was Warne who helped Buttler not only equal the record for successive fifties in the IPL (five) but then go on to realise his undoubted potential in the Test arena. 

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“I love listening to Warne - he’s a great story teller - and has an incredible outlook on the game,” Buttler says. “He sees things differently. Talking to me he just gave me so much confidence. And it didn’t feel false either which was a big thing for me. ‘Be authentic, be true to yourself. You’re good enough to do it,’ he said. Coming from someone who is one of the greatest players to have ever played the game, that meant a massive amount.” 

It is one of the greatest aspects of the IPL - players from different countries rubbing shoulders, young prodigies spending time with ageing icons. There’s time to talk.

Warne in fact suggests that it was during one of the IPL’s famous late-night events that he rammed the message home.

“Do you really want to play Test cricket? Really?!” Warne recalls saying. “Because if you really do then you can.”  

And he did. What a summer he has in prospect.

To read the full interview, pick up the April issue of The Cricketer