Buttler becomes T20 cricket’s leading run-scorer as Super Giants defeat Fire at Old Trafford
Jos Buttler became the highest run-scorer in T20 cricket when he reached 14,833 runs with a six for Manchester Super Giants against the Fire at Old Trafford on 5 August 2026, an innings that included 51 off 20 balls in an emphatic Super Giants victory.
Buttler surpassed Kieron Pollard’s previous record of 14,803 to move clear at the top of the all-time list, having reached the mark with the shot he dispatched over square leg onto the hotel balcony behind the stand. The tally of 14,833 comes from a 522-match T20 career and includes 1,192 runs scored in 31 matches in The Hundred, competitions that statisticians count within T20 totals.
The chase to become the format’s leading scorer has unfolded since Chris Gayle finished his career on 14,562 runs in 2022; Pollard, 39, overtook Gayle in June and extended the record to 14,803 while also leading the appearance list with 741 matches, 139 more than the second-placed Sunil Narine. Buttler sits ninth on the all-time appearance list with 522 matches and is England’s most-capped T20 player on 160 international appearances, though Alex Hales leads English players with 528 appearances and 14,429 runs, placing fourth on the overall runs list.
Buttler’s rise traced back to a Somerset debut in the 2009 Champions League Twenty20 in Hyderabad, when the then-19-year-old batted at number nine against New South Wales and ran a single off Moises Henriques, finishing unbeaten as his side closed on 111 before losing the match within 12 overs. Almost two years later he made his England debut in Manchester but was not required to bat; he did not bat in three of his first four T20 internationals and scored his first England runs—13—from number seven in that India series, his early international record including an unbeaten 32 against South Africa as his only score above 15 in his first 11 innings.
His development into a top-order run-scorer featured a first England half-century against New Zealand in 2013 and his first T20 World Cup century coming in the 2021 tournament against Sri Lanka at Sharjah, a 67-ball ton; every one of Buttler’s nine T20 centuries has arrived since 2021. He has been notably consistent across calendar years, averaging fewer than 30 in only one of the past 12 years (2017), and has produced recent form in domestic Hundred cricket with three scores of 50 or more in his last four matches and a 64-ball 131 in his most recent international innings, a victory over India at Southampton last month.
Buttler’s move up the order to opening roles has underpinned increased scoring; he averages 43 in the powerplay (first six overs) and, among English batters with more than 1,000 powerplay runs, only Tom Westley and Kevin Pietersen hold higher powerplay averages, albeit having played considerably less cricket. His attacking output is more pronounced in the death overs, striking at 184 between overs 16 and 20 compared with a strike-rate of 143 at the top of an innings. Dawid Malan summarised Buttler’s approach succinctly: "He started young [he was 20 when he made his England debut]. He always had the scoops and power and he's developed with the modern game."
Former England paceman Steven Finn pointed to Buttler’s wrists and unconventional timing as distinguishing features: "The first time I bowled at him in the nets, the ball just made a different sound of his bat. The way he turns his wrists and hockey slaps it when he hits a cover drive or when he hits a six down the ground, he's got such strong wrists which I think makes him a bit different to other batters who are more classical with the way they hit the ball." Malan also noted Buttler’s longer-format experience: "One of the things that people forget is Jos Buttler played 57 Tests for England," adding that Test cricket taught him how to build innings and win games.
Statistically Buttler shows little pronounced weakness by bowler type: his averages against seam, off-break and slow left-arm spin sit between 37 and 38, while his average against leg-break bowling is 31.31 and against left-arm unorthodox spin is 48.20; his boundary-ball percentage is marginally higher versus seam (low 20s) than against spin (mid-teens). He has scored almost half his runs off right-arm seamers, is relatively comfortable against the short ball—averaging 74 against it since 2021, with only Mohammad Rizwan averaging more among players with more than 500 runs in the same period—and has never been dismissed in T20s by Trent Boult, Matt Henry or Sam Curran; India’s Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Varun Chakaravarthy are the only bowlers to have dismissed him more than five times, while Rashid Khan has the best strike-rate against him, removing Buttler six times in 82 deliveries.
Buttler will turn 36 on 8 September and will be 38 by the time the next T20 World Cup is staged in late 2028; of the ICC full members, only Afghanistan included a player of that age in the 2026 competition. He struggled in the World Cup earlier this year—averaging 10.87 from eight matches—but, with the tournament returning to grounds where he captained England to victory in 2022, Buttler has shown few signs of decline and is likely to be part of England’s party travelling to Australia and New Zealand.
