Jos Buttler is in line for a lucrative Indian Premier League contract after the England limited-overs wicketkeeper put his name forward for next month’s auction.
The 25-year-old was faced with a choice between starting the English summer playing Championship cricket for Lancashire in a bid to win his Test place back from Jonny Bairstow or furthering his Twenty20 experience in India.
After the head coach, Trevor Bayliss, gave his blessing last week Buttler’s name will go under the hammer on 8 February; Mumbai Indians, Sunrisers Hyderabad and Kolkata Knight Riders are among the franchises known to be interested in his services.
The IPL season runs from 8 April until the final on 24 May. The Test opener Alex Hales is still considering whether to put his name forward after Mumbai, the team he had a brief spell with last year, opted not to retain him in their squad.
The deadline to register for the auction is this Friday. Bayliss and the director of cricket, Andrew Strauss, are keen for one-day players not in the Test side to further their experience in overseas Twenty20 leagues and the England and Wales Cricket Board is considering specialist contracts for white-ball players that would allow them greater freedom to do so and see their counties compensated properly.
Meanwhile, the former England spinner Robert Croft is set to join Bayliss’s coaching setup for the one-day international leg of the tour of South Africa in a 12-day spell as a spin-bowling consultant.
Croft, on the coaching staff at Glamorgan, will work with Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid, while Paul Collingwood, the Durham captain who has worked as a coach for the limited-overs sides before, will return for the World Twenty20 in India in March.
