The debate for any sport is polarising and generally pointless. Experts and armchair watchers make arbitrary and sentimental claims of supremacy across generations with little room for nuance. Nevertheless, regardless of the impracticality of identifying one player to send a GOAT certificate to in the post, Buttler’s name has forced its way into late-night pub discussions and rain delay TV panels. There are three parameters to consider: a player’s overall record, their impact on the game, and the silverware they have picked up along the way. Buttler measures up on all three counts.

Let’s start with the stats. Buttler averages 40.32 in ODI cricket and 34.69 in T20Is. Those numbers put him among the best of his era and certainly of his country, but it’s only when you delve deeper into comparison that his record truly begins to stand out. First, in ODI cricket, of all the players who average above 40 in the format, Buttler has the best strike rate by a country mile at 119.15. The next player on that list – a man also deserving of recognition in the conversation – is AB de Villiers, who had a strike rate of just over a run a ball.

You have to go even further down the list to Virat Kohli, who might average considerably more at 57.68 but scores much slower at 92.32. This isn’t down to a talent disparity but more the roles they fill in the side, Kohli the steering wheel and Buttler the metaphorical accelerator pedal. The same can be said when trying to compare to Sachin Tendulkar in ODIs, unquestionably a great when it comes to scoring hundreds with 49 but with a comparable average to Buttler and an inferior strike rate. Top and high middle-order batters aren’t a useful comparison given the difference in the time available to score runs.

Buttler’s like-for-like competitors at number six are realistically Michael Bevan and MS Dhoni. Again the pattern of higher averages but lower strike rates compared to Buttler continues, with Dhoni and Bevan striking at 83.81 and 77.73 respectively. The utility balance of average vs strike rate is debatable. Ultimately you want to score as many runs for your team as possible, but since the evolution of T20 and its osmosis into ODI cricket, for a lower middle-order batter or innings finisher, the emphasis is more and more on the speed at which runs are scored – a ten-ball 25 preferable to a 20-ball 30.

You can even make comparisons to Viv Richards. His ODI record still stands out by modern standards, but for the time it was freakish. In terms of how far his average and strike rate were compared to his contemporaries, he was effectively scoring with a Kohli-esque consistency at a Buttler-esque strike rate. Again, mostly batting higher up at No.4, he has just one more hundred than Buttler, who has scored half of his centuries batting at six or seven in ODIs.

It’s a mark of how good Buttler is in this role that he was kept at No.6 in T20I cricket for England for as long as he was. He only became a regular at the top of the order after 2017. From that point, he’s established his legacy as England’s greatest ever T20I batter. As an opener, Buttler averages 48.66, with only Mohammad Rizwan above him having played a similar number of matches at the top. Chris Gayle averaged 31.32 runs for the West Indies in T20Is and at a lower strike rate, but deserves a place in this conversation by virtue of his greatness in domestic T20 cricket, and his impressive ODI numbers.

Looking past the obligatory statistical justification, what truly puts makes Buttler a contemporary of greatness is his significance to the game and genius of innovation, something he shares with Kohli, Tendulkar, Bevan, Dhoni, de Villiers, Gayle and Richards. Kohli, Bevan and Dhoni all pushed the boundaries of what was possible in terms of consistency, especially when chasing. Tendulkar redefined the role of the opener, marrying relentless run-scoring with belligerence at the top of the order. De Villiers, Buttler’s closest predecessor, brought a range of strokeplay hitherto unseen, while Gayle and Richards were each a distance ahead of the rest in the early days of a format, smoothing the path for what would follow.

Like de Villiers, Buttler is part of the 360 generation, at the forefront of scoring all-round the wicket. It’s no longer a novelty or bonus for young white-ball cricketers to have a ramp or scoop shot in their arsenal, it’s a necessity. Buttler’s get-out-of-jail option is always to go behind the wicket. Whenever the boundaries dry up, he can execute such a high-risk shot, exposing all of his stumps, with so much certainty and composure it goes beyond showing off.

His true versatility as a batter is demonstrated most fully by his record in the IPL. His record-equalling four centuries in the last edition showed him at his best, able to score quickly despite taking on the anchor role for Rajasthan Royals. Buttler dominates bowling attacks, whether through a boundary fuelled blitz most recently against the Netherlands this year, or a more measured calculated destruction as against India in the T20 World Cup semi-final.

There’s no doubt Buttler has been helped to his stature by being part of one of the greatest white-ball teams of all time (another debate for another day). He currently holds both limited-overs trophies, which he won as vice-captain and captain. At the culmination of Eoin Morgan’s vision in 2019, Ben Stokes will always take the plaudits for finishing the job for England, but Buttler was equally as important to that famous victory at Lord’s. As one half of the 110-run partnership that saved the game for England when they were staring down a devastating loss, he rose to the occasion when the stakes were highest – just as he did against India last week.

So the answer is yes, Buttler deserves his own space amongst the greatest of all-time crowd and that’s not overblown hyperbole after a famous World Cup win with pictures of him parading around the MCG with a World Cup trophy fresh in everyone’s head. Buttler’s significance and genius in a fast-developing era of white-ball cricket don’t just make the case for his inclusion, they demand it.