Buttler discusses unpleasant captain’s duty: Senior player omission from World Cup

"Despite Jason Roy's impressive performance, boasting a strike rate above 100 and 4271 runs at an average of 40, he was surprisingly excluded from England's World Cup team."

London: England captain Jos Buttler discussed how he felt responsible for informing their regular opener about his omission from the squad for the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023.

Jason Roy’s run with the England side has been prolific. With a strike rate of above 100, he has 4271 runs at an average closing of 40. In spite of this, the batter was left out of England’s World Cup team.

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In 2023, Roy scored two ODI hundreds, but the batsman is currently dealing with back spasms, which prevented him from playing in the four-match ODI series against New Zealand. The selectors decided to include Harry Brook in the 15-player lineup despite their continued concerns about the batter’s fitness.
Buttler claimed that because he and Roy are such close friends and he felt a feeling of obligation, he told Roy of the choice.

“It’s part of the job as captain that is not enjoyable, whether they’re great friends or not, it’s not a nice job to do. I certainly feel like it’s my responsibility to give that news. He’s a really great mate of mine so it was a really tough call to make,” Buttler was quoted as saying by ICC.

Roy will serve as the team’s top-order backup, according to Buttler. He continued by saying that some talented players had to miss the travel to India due to the nature of the game.

“Jason will be the top-order reserve, absolutely. Harry, we feel gives us versatility: he can cover Nos. 1 to 6 in the batting order, which is obviously something that’s advantageous in a squad,” he added.

“But good players miss out, it’s the very brutal nature of sport. There’s plenty of people outside the 15 who will have felt that they were in with a really good chance of a spot. It’s a bad headache to have but a good problem as a selection committee when you have a deep pool of players to choose from,” the England captain said.

Before the World Cup, , England face-off against Ireland in a three-game series that begins on Wednesday. They’ll also feature in two warm-up fixtures, against India and Bangladesh respectively, prior to the global event.

England’s World Cup campaign starts on the opening day on October 5 when they take on New Zealand at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.