England might not have envisaged themselves to stare at a defeat against Nepal in their opening ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026 encounter, but they were. Chasing a target of 185 runs, Nepal were 171/5 after 18.3 overs. 14 runs were needed off 9 deliveries, and that particular over had already yielded 10 runs in 3 deliveries.
At that stage, former English captain Jos Buttler was seen making the long from his wicketkeeping position to have a word with the bowler, Luke Wood. Indeed, being the most experienced player in the current English squad, one would expect Buttler to impart his knowledge whenever applicable.
But, there was another intention behind it. Only three deliveries after he shared his advice, Wood had the wicket of Gulsan Jha. That could be attributed to ‘taking the sting out’ of Nepal’s incessant attack — a tactic straight out of the Rishabh Pant playbook.
The Rishabh Pant Tactic
In the final of the 2024 T20 World Cup, Pant ‘faked’ a knee injury when the game was drifting towards South Africa. With the Proteas requiring 26 off 24 and both Heinrich Klaasen and David Miller going hammer and tongs, Pant called the physio for a niggle, when instead, all he wanted to do was break South Africa’s rhythm. In the very next Hardik Pandya took the wicket of Heinrich Klaasen.
He later admitted:
I was asking the physio to take time. When Rohit bhai asked if my knee is fine I said, 'Bhaiya, mast acting kar raha tha' (I was acting all this while). Sometimes you have to do these types of things in matches. I'm not saying it works every time, but it does work sometimes and if it works at that kind of a moment, then nothing like it.Rishabh Pant, in The Kapil Sharma Show
How Jos Buttler Used It
As it turns out, Buttler tried doing the same in the match against Nepal, and evidently, it worked out exactly how the English keeper intended it to.
Responding to a question from The Quint in the pre-match press conference ahead of England’s next fixture against West Indies, which will be played on 11 February at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, Buttler said:
I've played quite a bit of cricket with Luke Wood actually at Lancashire, so I know him pretty well. As a wicketkeeper, you can slow the game down a bit because it takes you a long time to get to the bowler. So, just to take a bit of sting out the game at some times. I was just trying to help. It's the beauty of the game. It's a team game. You're just trying to work out areas where you can assist your teammates and get the desired result.Jos Buttler, to The Quint
On being a major part of the leadership group, he added:
I think as a senior player and you've seen lots of cricket and been in lots of situations to try and work out where you can help. Not just on the field, but also off the field, around training, be available to young players. There's so many people who can do that to help guys.Jos Buttler
Brendon McCullum as as Sharp a Coach as I’ve Ever With: Jos Buttler
During the match against Nepal, England coach Brendon McCullum was seen with a walkie-talkie, passing instructions to substitutes, for them to relay it to the players on the ground. On McCullum’s communication process, Buttler added:
I think he's had those walkie-talkies for a while, to be fair. But yeah, the communication from top to bottom has always been really good in the group. I think Baz can sit with his feet up and his sunglasses on and look very relaxed, but he's as sharp a coach as I've ever worked with. He doesn't miss a beat. He's obviously a really successful captain. So he's got lots of great messages and knowledge and stuff to pass on to all the players. And his relationship with Harry Brook, I think, has been a great one for this team. They're a really close pair. They see the game in a similar way and also challenge each other and I think more so for cricket in general actually to be coaches getting more involved in real time in the cricket. I played in the IPL at Gujarat where Ashish Nehra is very active on the boundary rope and it seems like cricket is the kind of sport where we are still a bit behind maybe in that area where you look at other sports where managers and coaches, you think of rugby running messages on and plays like that. So maybe that will come more and more into cricket.Jos Buttler