IPL 2025: Why Jos Buttler Is More Important Than Shubman Gill For Epic Gujarat Titans Triumph

Gujarat Titans is Jos Buttler's third IPL franchise. [Source: @gujarat_titans/X]

As an international captain and batter, the last year hasn’t been the best one for former England captain Jos Buttler. As a captain, in particular, it has arguably been a career low.

Not slated to play for England in the next two months, Buttler would be using this downtime to keep Indian Premier League 2025 at his centre of attention. In addition to completing a decade at the biggest T20 tournament across the globe, this season will also witness Buttler playing for his third franchise – Gujarat Titans.

Jos Buttler IPL Stats

45th most capped player in the IPL, Buttler is the 20th highest run-scorer – only the sixth after David Warner, AB de Villiers, Chris Gayle, Faf du Plessis and Shane Watson among overseas players. Even a mediocre season by his standards should see him jump at least three spots this year.

For batters with at least 2,000 IPL runs, his average of 38.10 is the 10th highest. Additionally, a strike rate of 147.52 is the seventh highest behind the following names (min. 2,000 runs):

Since Buttler has scored 3,582 runs precisely, his average is the seventh-highest (min. 3,500 runs). For such batters, he is only behind de Villiers and Gayle in terms of strike rate.

Buttler’s biggest IPL achievement, however, lies in scoring as many as seven centuries – only behind former Royal Challengers Bangalore captain Virat Kohli (8). Following Kohli and Warner (both in 2016), Buttler became only the third player to score in excess of 800 runs in a single season in 2022.

In spite of being a World Cup-winning captain and a stellar wicket-keeper in T20Is, Buttler never had the opportunities to make significant impact in these two divisions, especially the former, in the IPL.

Jos Buttler Is Important To Gujarat Titans (And Vice-Versa)

During IPL 2025 auction in November, GT defeated the likes of Rajasthan Royals, Punjab Kings and Lucknow Super Giants to snap the Englishman for as much as INR 15.75 crore for a reason.

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For a franchise which had a settled opening pair across three seasons, Wriddhiman Saha’s retirement forced them to acquire a wicket-keeper batter capable of opening the batting. At 34, even if he doesn’t keep wickets, Buttler deserves the price tag for having the potential to produce memorable knocks.

Set to open the batting alongside captain Shubman Gill, Buttler has an opportunity to dictate terms for a team which is already being considered top-heavy. One of the 10 IPL openers with more than 3,000 runs, Buttler is among the four to average 40+. More importantly, his strike rate of 149.62 is only behind Gayle (151.40) among IPL openers (min. 3,000 runs).

Considering how no other overseas batting option at Gujarat has proven IPL credentials, the team management can’t afford a lean season from Buttler. In the middle of a mid-life crisis in terms of his T20 career, even Buttler’s stakes could drop substantially if he follows a lacklustre international season with a flop IPL season. Thus, Buttler is important to Titans and vice-versa.

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