Yahoo Sport 
Jos Buttler: England Test return 'feels like another debut - it's an awesome opportunity'
Only a week ago he was sitting in his hotel room in Calcutta preparing to play a crucial IPL match for his franchise, the Rajasthan Royals. Buttler was single-handedly turning their season around with some brilliant performances and thinking more about batting his team into the IPL play-offs than himself into a Test series against Pakistan.
But then his phone rang in that hotel room and his life changed. It was Ed Smith, the new national selector, on the line casting him as the star turn in his rejigged England batting order as a specialist No7 or, in Buttler’s words, a “luxury player”.
“It feels like another debut, really,” said Buttler of his change in circumstances. “You always think maybe that race [Test cricket] is run and will never happen again. It's not that you live with regrets but you definitely miss it. To get that call the overriding emotion was excitement. Turning up here on England duty to play a Test match is unbelievable. It’s an awesome opportunity.”
Rarely do specialist No7s consistently contribute and it is normally a role for a player with another skill to his repertoire. Buttler is a multifaceted player but he will not be keeping wicket. Jonny Bairstow has that job and it was noticeable at Lord’s on Monday that he alone was doing keeping drills with coach Bruce French.
Instead Buttler, along with fellow arrivals from India, Ben Stokes and Chris Woakes, was adjusting from a white ball and Indian pitches to a red Dukes ball and Lord’s in May. The pitch for the Test is green but at Lord’s overhead conditions dictate play. Selection could be tricky. Light showers are forecast for the first two days which will probably make England lean towards Chris Woakes and his swing bowling rather than Mark Wood’s pace but then hot weather is forecast for the weekend. Smith was at England nets on Monday but his job is done. It will be down to Joe Root and Trevor Bayliss to pick the XI.
The net session on Monday was an extended one, a reflection of the fact that senior figures within the camp felt England had not netted long enough, or hard enough, in Australia over the winter. The intensity of the session was high, with Carl Hopkinson, the former Sussex player who has started as fielding coach, running through new drills. Dom Bess was busy getting stuck in during the football kickabout and then bowling in the nets with youthful enthusiasm of someone who couldn’t quite believe his luck while Smith spent a long time chatting to Alastair Cook, getting to know players he has only commented on or written about. They were even washing down the statues and scrubbing the benches in the pavilion.
There is a new broom off the field too. The players are being split into groups this week to be briefed on the new Hundred tournament by the ECB. These are the men who will have to make that work and winning their support is crucial if it is ever to get off the ground.
Smith’s recall of Buttler has already divided opinions. Those county batsmen told to get runs in April by Bayliss to force their way in the Test must feel they have been playing a mug’s game, living uncertain lives against the swinging ball while Buttler smashed it around in T20 powerplays.
“I’m very aware that I’m the beneficiary of opinions. Not necessarily from stacking up runs in first-class cricket. I don’t know whether there’s a right or wrong. Everyone has an opinion. I’ve been afforded an amazing opportunity to come and play and one that I’m excited about and accepting of the noise around it. That’s outside my control,” said Buttler.
“It's going to be a challenge but from the conversations I've had with Joe [Root] and Ed Smith, it's very much that they want me to play the way that suits me and in the fashion they believe will get the best out of me in that number seven role. Of course there are differences. But for me it's about expressing myself, trusting my instincts and allowing that to flourish rather than fight it.”
Buttler has had two attempts at Test cricket. The first started promisingly with attacking batting against India in 2014 but came to a standstill in the Ashes the following summer when he looked more afraid of failure and became bogged down, playing against his natural game.
Three Tests in India in 2016 as a stop-gap No7 while England disintegrated brought some success, including a watchful 76 in Mumbai, but since then Buttler looked to have lost interest in red-ball cricket, playing four first-class games last season for Lancashire without making a fifty.
Shane Warne was his team manager in India and the chats between the pair were about how he could transfer his skills to Test cricket again. With Warne it is all about self-belief.
“For me it is about trusting instincts and not fighting them," he said. "In the past I have felt as if I had to play in a certain way or be something I am not - so, as much as I can, I will be trusting my instincts. That is going to be the best way to helping me be successful.
"For the first half of my Test career and in India I trusted myself better than I did in that Ashes series here when I went away from what was working. It is incredible opportunity I have been handed to come back in. The guys who have selected me have asked me to play in that fashion so that is how I have got to do it.”
