Graeme Swann: 'If England are aggressive, they can win the tournament for Jos Buttler'

England's World Cup begins in earnest on Saturday after Tuesday's false start in Bridgetown. After rain prevented them from embarking on an awkward 10-over chase of 109 against Scotland, they return to Kensington Oval for another grudge match against Australia.

This same fixture played out here in 2010 as the final of the World T20, which England won convincingly. A similar performance would kickstart the defending champions' campaign.

Graeme Swann was part of that squad as the team's joint-leading wicket-taker, with 10 dismissals at 14.40. Naturally, the offspinner sees no reason why England cannot become the first team to win three T20 World Cups. The similarities between this group and the one that bagged England's first ICC trophy 14 years ago are clear.

"I'm excited because I see so many parallels between this team and our team [from 2010]," Swann says. "The ultra-aggressive top-order is the only way to play.

"I think if you get the two ends of the spectrum right - the first six overs with the ball, the first six overs with the bat - you win more often than not. We've got world-class spinners to bowl in the middle period. I think we cover all bases. And if we believe in ourselves and play in a very aggressive manner, we can win it."

That aggression in 2010 was an anomaly given how the winning XI came together. A pre-tournament training camp in Abu Dhabi saw the first XI fall to an England Lions who chased down 158 with five wickets in hand. Openers Michael Lumb (55 off 35) and Craig Kieswetter (81 not out off 66) were the architects of the upset.

Head coach Andy Flower decided to draft both at the top of the order, discarding Jonathan Trott and Joe Denly after two more low-intensity displays against Pakistan in Dubai. The intensity of Lumb and Kieswetter (player of the final), followed by Kevin Pietersen (player of the series with 248 runs), gave England a dominant top three.

"That team, if you remember, came together by accident," Swann recalls. "The one-day team used to get picked by 'if you were good at Test match cricket, you got a gig in the one-dayers'.

"We played a warm-up game before in Abu Dhabi, and Lumb and Kieswetter smashed us all over the place. And Andy Flower saw our batting compared to theirs and said, 'why don't we just have those in our team?' He got them in, and it was the best move ever. So thank you to South African schools cricket for giving us the best top three in the world at the time and won us the World Cup!"

Swann credits Flower for being open-minded enough to make that last-minute switch. But he regrets that England's success in 2010 came in isolation. The team soon regressed back to their old ways, flunking their next four World Cup campaigns across 50- and 20-overs alike, unlike the first stirrings of Eoin Morgan's revolution in 2016.

"We didn't learn from that T20 World Cup," Swann says. "I think that's the biggest mistake we made as a nation - not realising how we won that World Cup was by being the most progressive and most attacking team. In the 50-over cricket, we stuck with formulas and only tried to get 234 to win 86% of games and whatever, and picked Test batsmen to get slow hundreds rather than, say, Jason Roy.

"We didn't move on as quickly as we should have done. We saw the change when Eoin Morgan was in charge, it was phenomenal."

Swann fears this England crop has gone backwards in its own way. The meek defence of their 2019 ODI title in 2023's World Cup suggests some attacking intent has been lost.

"I think we need to get back to how it was under Morgy at first. Because the last World Cup, I thought we were very timid. We didn't look to dominate games, there was very much a protect your wicket before you take a risky option [attitude], and it was never 'take the aggressive option' as we've seen in Bazball and Test cricket. I think that's the way to win a T20 World Cup."

Regaining that liberation has been high on the agenda for Jos Buttler and head coach Matthew Mott. A line has clearly been drawn under the events of last winter.

Buttler himself is at an intriguing juncture in his career. At the age of 33, he is undoubtedly the greatest limited-overs cricketer England has produced, yet captaincy has muddied the waters somewhat.

He grew as a skipper throughout the 2022 T20 World Cup in Australia, a role he had only taken up six months earlier after Morgan stepped down. Replacing such a talismanic leader was always going to be tricky, but Buttler looked to have made the difficult transition by lifting the trophy at the MCG.

Now, he has the opportunity to join Daren Sammy as the only other captain to oversee two successful campaigns after the West Indian did so in 2012 and 2016. Swann believes success for the team will solidify Buttler's standing as a modern great of English cricket.

"You could say that, yeah," Swann said, when asked if this was a legacy-defining tournament for Buttler. "You'd start arguing that he's no spring chicken anymore, which sounds so weird for me to say, that Jos Buttler is coming into the back-end of his career, because I'm sure he'll carry on playing in the IPL until he is crawling out to the middle, because he's getting paid so handsomely.

"He needs to win as a captain in this, just to keep himself satisfied and happy that he is the right man going forward. I hope to still see him [play for England] for a few years because I watched him in the IPL and he's a joke. He's still brilliant and still so dominant.

"As a player, he is phenomenal. You only need to look at his results and the fact he plays white-ball cricket now and no one bats an eyelid. When he played Test cricket, he was one of the keenest people to play Test cricket. People don't get that about Jos. But he loved red-ball cricket and he adapted his game to do a job for England. But in white-ball cricket, he is undoubtedly one of the best in the world.

"Whether, as a captain, he's one of the best in the world, only time will tell. He had a very difficult act to follow in Eoin Morgan, who is the best one-day captain we've ever had. To totally change the mindset and outlook of the team to win that (2019) World Cup, it's one of the greatest management efforts I've ever seen.

"This England team, if they are aggressive enough, they can win the tournament for Jos."

Meanwhile, Swann has backed England's decision to move on from James Anderson despite accepting that the 41-year-old quick is "fitter and leaner" than ever.

The first Test of the summer at Lord's on July 10 against West Indies will be Anderson's last after the management group of Rob Key, Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes informed England's leading wicket-taker that it was time to explore other options. Anderson moved to 700 Test dismissals on the recent tour of India, and had ambitions of making the 2025-26 Ashes tour, by which point he would be 43.

Swann played 129 international matches alongside Anderson, including all but four of his 60 Test caps. The pair remain good friends - Swann is the godfather to Anderson's eldest daughter - but Swann accepts that making the decision on Anderson's behalf was the right call.

"It's like a dog eating his dinner. If you don't take the bowl away, he'll keep eating forever until he explodes!

"I'm very happy that he's got the chance to finish at Lord's. Bookending his career with that five-for on debut here [against Zimbabwe in 2003], and the obvious five-for he's going to get in his last Test, followed by the obvious cries of 'Keep Jimmy!' You can't play forever, even though Jimmy is fitter and leaner than he has been.

"He's far more vain these days - he's actually got some muscles and he's trying to show them off. I don't think you can play forever. And I think if you left it up to Jimmy, he would."

Having worked with England Lions in recent years, Swann has faith in the next crop of fast bowlers. He cites Matthew Potts (Durham), Matt Fisher (Yorkshire), and Sam Cook (Essex) as three who could step up for the difficult task of filling the void left by Anderson and Stuart Broad, who retired at the end of last summer.

"Potts and Fisher, I think, are the two in line. Sam Cook is a brilliant bowler. I think a lot of these guys would have been playing Test cricket for any other team in the world.

"Whoever they get in to play has a massive opportunity to walk in there and make the position their own. I hope it's not like David Moyes taking over from Fergie though, because that would be a nightmare for them."

Swann also urges the ECB to keep Anderson involved in the set-up as part of the coaching team and help ease the newcomers over the upcoming transitional period. Speaking from experience, Swann also hopes Anderson does not make the mistake he made after retiring in 2013 and drift off into a media career before returning as spin bowling coach for Trent Rockets in 2021, under Flower.

"I hope there is a thought to get him involved as quickly as possible with our fast bowlers. Certainly, pay him enough to get him doing it, because he's going to get big-money offers in the media and this and that. I think there has to be a way of keeping him involved.

"It's a massive regret of mine I spent all my time straying into the media and took almost 10 years to get back into the coaching side, and I realised how much I missed it. It's everything to you as a player, and when you get back in you actually feel like you belong and you're a part of it.

"I know that will happen to Jimmy as well. He cannot stay at home. No one can live with Jimmy - he's that miserable!"