Born on 24 November 1981, Ian Butler is primarily a medium fast bowler. His career has been overshadowed by the emergence of a certain Shane Bond, reducing his appearances for New Zealand to a bare minimum, but on his day Butler can be deadly. He has the ability to get some serious lift off docile surfaces. Butler has played 8 test matches between 2002-04, but has been in the wilderness since then. He did show flashes of his brilliance picking up 6/46 against Pakistan at Wellington in 2004 but has played just one more Test since then.

While his Test appearances have been sporadic, so too has been his caps in the shorter form of the game. In a 9 year long career, Butler has had only 24 caps stitched together in a span of 7 years. He has had some reasonable success within the period though with his best effort being 4/44 against Pakistan during the Champions Trophy in 2009.

Butler played his last game, a T20 against Pakistan in December, 2010 and it seems that he might find wearing the uniform of the Black Caps a distant dream. He returned to the side after 3 years in February 2013 on the back of some good performances for his T20 side Otage Volts, but could not contribute consistently in the 4 games that he played. All his matches were against England and he picked up only 3 wickets and was very expensive.

Interesting Fact: In an interview in March 2014, Ian Butler said "that he played Tests too early" and hence was not able to perform at the levels he would have if he had been groomed before hand.


By Pradeep Krishnamurthy
As of April 2014