A free mindset has helped Suryakumar Yadav emerge as the "batter of the tournament" but it takes "one chance to create a wicket", said England captain Jos Buttler, ahead of their T20 World Cup semifinal against India on Thursday.
Suryakumar has already scored three fifties in five games in the tournament and popular belief is that he has outshone the great Virat Kohli on certain occasions.
"He's been great to watch, hasn't he? I think he's someone who has probably been the batter of the tournament so far in terms of the way you want to watch someone go about it," Buttler told reporters on Wednesday.
"But as with any batsman in the world, it takes one chance to create a wicket. We desperately need to find a way to do that,” he added.
Buttler, who has seen Suryakumar from close quarters in the IPL, thinks that his biggest asset is the freedom with which he expresses himself.
"His biggest strength looks to be the amount of freedom he plays with. He's obviously got all the shots but he allows himself to play all the shots, as well. He's got a very free mindset from what I can see," the England skipper said.
While praising Suryakumar, Buttler didn't forget to mention that his team can't afford to just think about him. "It would be remiss just to think about him. I think they have some other excellent players, as well,"
Buttler has been dismissed five times in T20Is by Indian seamer Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who has conceded only 30 runs off his 32 balls to the England skipper. However, Buttler seemed confident ahead of his face-off with Bhuvneshwar at the Adelaide Oval.
"I certainly don't fear anyone. I always prepare well, and I look to play the ball in front of me and not the bowler," he said. The Adelaide Oval has shorter side boundaries and Buttler said they will need to change their tactics a bit.
"Yeah, obviously tactically it may be a bit different. The dimensions and the surface we play on obviously have a big impact on the way you bat and bowl on those surfaces, so we've done some good things,"
"We have guys who have played at Adelaide before, and we go into the game with some good ideas, and we react well on our feet when we have to," he added.
There have been talks about the match being played on a used pitch but Buttler didn't have many concerns about that.
"I think having talked to the groundsman, his team is really confident that he has had a lot of time to put in some really good work into the wicket. "He (groundsman) seems very comfortable that it is going to be a really good surface and a consistent surface. At the moment, I have no worries about the pitch," the flamboyant keeper-batter said. Buttler outrightly dismissed the theory that India no longer looks like the formidable side that it used to be.
"No, not at all. I think India is a very, very strong team. I think Indian teams have been consistently strong for a long period of time, and naturally so with the amount of depth and talent that is in the Indian game. We certainly don't want to see an India-Pakistan final, so we'll be trying all we can to make sure that doesn't happen,"
While 165 has been a par score at the Adelaide Oval for teams batting first, Buttler doesn't want to rely on numbers alone.
"If we set first, we want to post a score that can't be chased, and obviously we'll be confident to chase anything down batting second," he gave a linear answer.
"Historically, I think if you look at the stats, it shows about 165 is around the par score here, but I'm not really interested in a par score, I'm interested in a winning score tomorrow," he said.
