Phil Salt has been an extraordinary player for England for every team he features in the T20 league. He was impressive in the recent series versus South Africa and Ireland. Reflecting on his journey in T20 cricket, Salt said that this country (England) is quite suspicious about this format.
“I saw something the other day that summed it up quite well: ‘We are quite suspicious of the shortest format in this country.’ I don’t know why that is, but sometimes it can be viewed with a bit of a hit-and-giggle mentality,” Salt says, stirring a flat white and reflecting on a year which has cemented his status as one of the world’s premier T20 openers. “It really isn’t, is it?”
Salt is so crazy about his game and this is what makes him special. Before every game, he’d take a notebook and write and watch everything he needed to know about his opposition’s bowlers.
“Everything’s got to have due process behind it,” he explains.
“It really is down to you… I’ll get my iPad and have a look through the footage. More often than not, I’ll grab someone who I know [to discuss it with] and then I’ll go through the footage myself too, just with my notebook, and write down what I think is important at that moment. I’ll then go away from it for a bit, and come back and have another look at it.”
Salt tries to determine how bowlers sequence their overs and asks for their pitch-maps to determine where they give up runs:
“Where they go in the first few balls, that’s a massive tell. You’ve got to look at the whole picture: where they feel most comfortable going at the death, what their pace-off variations are, and when they bowl them. What does a bowler go to straight after he’s been hit for a boundary?
“It also looks different if you compare venues. On a wicket like Cardiff, where there’s a bit in it for the bowlers, there’s no use looking at what they did when the ball was flying in Mumbai because it’s not relevant. You have to really zone in on some guys… You can only know that by drilling into the analysis and what they’ve done in the past.”
There is also a predictive element to Salt’s preparation:
“Even the smaller stuff, like watching the opposition in the warm-up, you get a massive tell for where people are, and what they’re feeling most comfortable with on that day. When you see someone bowling five or six yorkers before a game, that could be someone you’re lining up at the death.
“It’s constantly a moving picture but it’s all about trying to get as much information in as possible, without clouding your own mindset, and just remember that regardless, they could bowl anything at you. But you’ve got to be on top of your game to react to it… The end goal is that I want to know exactly where the opposition’s at, at all times.”
During their brief stint of T20 cricket at the end of the season, Salt has been England’s most notable player. In the past two weeks, he has amassed 259 runs off 130 balls against South Africa and Ireland, including a career-high 141 not out in England’s historic 304 for 2 at Old Trafford. He has now scored four of England’s eight T20I hundreds.
“I feel like this is the player that I want to be, but I feel like I’ve still got improvements to make in so many areas,” Salt says. “I’m turning up approaching every game with the same mentality: I want to be there, I want to contribute, I want to be the man. That’s the mindset I have. And also, I want to enjoy it… When I do that, that’s when I play my best.”
Impressive and match-winner in T20 format, Salt failed to emulate this form in the ODI cricket for England as he has not featured for the side in this format since March.
“I did my best in that role,” he reflected last week. “It didn’t quite work out.” But there is an unintended consequence: rather than tinkering with his approach across formats, Salt can pour his full focus into T20 ahead of February’s World Cup.
Salt was part of RCB in this year’s IPL and he could have missed the final of the season but his wife made sure that he featured in the final. Salt went on to score 16 runs off 9 and took a blinder to help his side clinch the Trophy for the very first time.
Salt was in Ahmedabad when he got a call from his wife that he has become a father now.
“I was in Ahmedabad two days before the final, and got a phone call off the missus to say it was definitely happening,” he recalls. “I got on the plane as quickly as I could.”
His son was born on June 1, and he was back on a plane the next day. “Abi kicked me out the door, basically,” he says, laughing. “She said, ‘You have to play’. She made the decision for me, which was very funny – and very selfless of her.”
“I missed an IPL final the year before, and that one really hurt because we [Kolkata Knight Riders] went on to win it. I was part of everything leading in, and then to not be a part of it did sting a bit… The final was a little bit of a blur, until the last over, which I remember second by second. It all happened very quickly… It was really, really special.”
Although Salt has made a small technical adjustment by raising his bat and slightly opening the bat face to reach the off side, he claims that his mindset has changed the most:
“It was particularly to have, from the third, fourth, fifth and sixth stump, four different areas that I can hit those balls. That is primarily where you’re going to face most balls against the new ball.
“When you’re playing that area well and also hammering the short ball at the same time, two fielders [out of the ring] shouldn’t be enough… It’s been about developing my scoring areas. For example, when someone does throw two [deep fielders] out leg-side, I’ve still got 80 yards there where I can score a boundary at a really low risk.
“That’s probably the biggest difference,” Salt says, comparing himself to a younger version of himself. “That player might have gone, ‘I’ll just hit it over them’. But if I can hit that same ball over 45 [short fine leg] or if I can just change the position I’m standing on the crease and hit it through mid-on, it feels like a completely different game for me and for the bowler.”
