England wicketkeeper-batsman Jos Buttler admitted that he wasn’t able to handle the pressure of expectations during the IPL 2022. Buttler got off to a dream start in the 2022 edition of the tournament while playing for Rajasthan Royals, scoring three centuries and one fifty in the first half of the competition.

With almost 500 runs under his belt in the first seven games of the tournament, Buttler was in contention to break Virat Kohli’s tally of 973 runs, which the Indian veteran achieved in IPL 2016.

However, Buttler could not handle the pressure and veered off the track. Eventually, Buttler scored 863 runs in 17 matches of IPL 2022 at an average of 57.53 and a strike rate of 149.03.

Buttler said on the For the Love of Cricket YouTube Channel, “The hard time came when I was on 450 to 500 runs at the halfway stage, and the talk was like, ‘Can he reach Kohli’s record?’ I didn’t deal with that well, actually, and I didn’t tell anybody. Because of that, I got a few low scores. So I went from no expectations before the tournament to people asking if I could break Kohli’s record and score 1000 runs in an IPL season. And that just killed me for a few games.”

“I finally told Trevor Penney that this and the Orange Cap was really in my head. The stuff you shouldn’t be playing was affecting me. After that, I got my mojo back again in the playoffs. That was a massive season in my career even though I fell well short of Kohli. But at that time, it was the second most in a season and equalled him for the most hundreds in a season. Kohli is the best, so to put yourself in and around that was a huge confidence booster for me.”

Buttler has amassed 4646 runs in 138 IPL matches at a strike rate of 149.73.