Jos Buttler stands outside a hotel room door bouncing a ball on his bat. Trent Boult opens the door carrying a guitar, which he strums as they stroll off together. Buttler plays a game where the object is to throw nuts and berries into your partner’s mouth, Buttler cradling the baby-faced left-handed opener Yashasvi Jaiswal in his arms and saying: “Yes, yes, get in there mate,” with a surprising degree of tenderness.
Buttler sits on a stool as Ravichandran Ashwin describes his earliest memory of cricket: an enormous tree where, as a very young child, he was dropped off alone with his kitbag from a motorbike driven by his father, a tree he still revisits when he can.
