The Combined Best Test XI of 2018

Wicket –Keeper

#6 Jos Buttler (England)

Jos Buttler finally came good in Test Cricket this year

Matches – 10, Innings – 18, Runs scored – 760, Avg – 44, Hundreds – 1, Fifties – 6

Though Jos Buttler hasn’t kept wickets a lot in the year, he is a regular wicket-keeper who makes into this team on the basis of his batting performance. Since this team has only 5 specialist batsmen, the team needs more of a batsman wicket-keeper like Jos Buttler to strengthen the middle-order. Jos Buttler is not at all a part-time wicket-keeper by any stretch of the imagination.

As a batsman, Jos Buttler had a wonderful time in 2018. Buttler first scored 2 fifties against Pakistan. That was followed by 5 low scores against India. When a question mark was raised against Buttler’s ability as a Test batsman, Buttler scored a brilliant hundred against India at Nottingham when England had nothing to lose. He followed that up with a 69 in the second innings of the fourth Test which sealed the series in favor of England. Buttler finished off the series with a score of 89 at the Oval.

In the low-scoring Test series against Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka, Buttler had decent figures of 38, 35, 63, 34, 16 and 64 which enabled England to make a clean sweep of the three-Test series for the first time in the sub-continent.

Jos Buttler would be the wicket-keeper for this team to lend the much-required balance.