England head coach Chris Silverwood has come out in defence of the under-fire Jos Buttler, saying he looked good with the bat in the first Test against West Indies and will be given "the best chance to succeed" in the remaining two games.
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The wicketkeeper-batsman scored 35 and 9 across the two innings in Southampton as England coped a four-wicket defeat.
It is worth mentioning here that Buttler has not scored a fifty in his last 12 Test innings and now averages just 31.46 after 42 Tests.
"I'm not going to go down that road yet of putting Jos under pressure, because I don't think it's going to help him. So, first and foremost, we want to give Jos the best opportunity to succeed," Silverwood was quoted by Cricket Australia.
"(Jos) looked brilliant coming into this game, in practice and everything. He looked very good in the first innings. He just needs to go and make those big scores now, doesn't he? Which he knows as well."
After England’s loss in the series opener, former pacer Darren Gough said Buttler's Test career is under threat and he has got two games to save it.
Amid the scrutiny, the England team management is making sure that Buttler remains in a good headspace for the next two Tests.
"From our point of view, it's just making sure that he feels confident in the environment he's in. We'll give him the best chance to succeed really. The rest of it is, he has a good day out, gets some runs, hopefully the rest will be history – he'll go on from there," Silverwood said.
Asked about wicketkeeper Ben Foakes, who is waiting for his chance, the England coach replied: "... you're right, we have got a very, very good gloveman in Ben Foakes out there, which we're lucky to have."
The talks around Joe Denly’s form has also started after the opening Test. Experts feel England should look past Denly and retain young Zak Crawley when regular captain Joe Root returns for the second Test following the birth of his second child.
Denly scored 18 and 29 in each innings respectively at the Ageas Bowl and has now played 15 Tests for England with an average of only 29.54.
"We're all desperate to see Joe do really well. We can see he's trying hard, he's training hard. He's a great bloke hence why we all went to see him do well, but obviously he's under pressure a little bit, yeah," Silverwood said.
"Zak is improving constantly. He certainly showed maturity and the innings he played was very good. We have some young players in that side that seem to have good heads on their shoulders, and he's one of them.
"We'd have all loved to have seen him go on and get up to three figures but what we did was very good and helped us get into the position that we did."
The second Test will be played in Manchester from Thursday (July 16).
(With PTI inputs)
