Phil Salt reclaimed his grasp on England’s T20I opener spot with devastating force at Old Trafford.
The runs didn’t just flow, that’s not the correct adjective for the brute force with which Salt obliterated South Africa’s star-studded attack. He hammered Bjorn Fortuin’s docile offies, clobbered balls sent down far too short by Marco Jansen and pelted Kagiso Rabada over midwicket. Often stats can’t portray the true stature of an innings, but here, there’s no context needed. The only way to truly convey Salt’s brutality are the records: England’s fastest T20I century (39 balls), the highest T20I score by an England player, 141 runs, 60 balls, and England 304-2.
Innings like that are a freak, born out of flat tracks, off-the-boil bowlers and awesome power-hitting. But, looking at the list of players who have scored T20I hundreds for England, only Salt’s name appears more than once. In fact, he’s responsible for half the T20I centuries ever scored by men in an England shirts. Jos Buttler, England’s greatest white-ball batter, who took one fewer ball to reach 50 than Salt did today, has played 139 T20Is, and reached 100 once. Alex Hales’ England career spanned more than a decade and, again, in only one of his 75 innings did reach three figures.
Across all countries, only two players, Glenn Maxwell and Rohit Sharma, have scored more T20I hundreds than Salt, and both have played more or less triple the matches. In 45 appearances for England, Salt’s hundreds have come once every 11 games.
Fastest centuries for England in men's T20Is:
— Wisden (@WisdenCricket) September 12, 2025
39 balls – Phil Salt
42 balls – Liam Livingstone
48 balls – Dawid Malan
What an innings from the England opener 🔥#ENGvSA pic.twitter.com/CgifCvwA1w
Those kinds of odds make it ridiculous to think that there was a chance Salt wouldn’t be starting this series in England’s best XI. England have got their eyes on Ben Duckett and Jamie Smith as a white-ball opening partnership to rival the Roy-Bairstow years. Duckett is inked in for every format, while Smith pulled focus when Salt missed the T20I series against West Indies earlier this summer. He hit a 26-ball 60 in Southampton, and while he and Salt finished equal on runs in The Hundred, Smith’s came at a far greater lick. Had at least one of Duckett or Smith not been rested for this series, Salt would have been fighting for his place in the side.
There’s an air of the Mandela Effect on Salt’s T20I career, skewed by a record built on flat Caribbean tracks and franchise globe trotting. Almost half the T20Is Salt’s played have been in the West Indies – a quirk of the post-Covid schedule which means Salt has played more T20Is in Bridgetown than England – and all three of his hundreds before now came in the Caribbean. Largely, these are series broadcast on cold winter evenings or late at night to few watchers back home. The one of those that does stir the memory, was in Tarouba in 2023, when he hit back-to-back hundreds within four days after being passed-over in the IPL auction.
2nd T20I, England vs South Africa
vs
- Ball by ball Over
When he was picked up by Kolkata Knight Riders as an injury replacement the following year, he formed one half of an awesome opening partnership with Sunil Narine as an unmatched force in the powerplay. That IPL season kickstarted a huge T20 scoring spree for Salt, which continued into the following year for RCB, when he was a major part of their first title-winning campaign. Since the beginning of 2024, only four players have scored more runs than Salt, and none at a higher strike-rate. Those runs, scored in Dubai, India and South Africa in tournaments not watched by many of those tuning into England’s summer T20Is, go wrongly uncounted when assessing his abilities. Instead, hitting it down the throat of a boundary rider as England slump to another white-ball defeat is what counts, and why many would have barely noticed Salt slipping out of the side this summer.
Now, however, on his home ground, against a genuinely world-beating side, he’s given an unequivocal display of his value, in an innings which will take some beating both in the record books, and by the usurpers coming up behind him. Two hours of pure dominance in Manchester gave an emphatic account of why Salt should be considered a T20 batting powerhouse.
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