Salt Keen To Join Pepper In Adding Special Flavour To England Batting

By David Williams

Phil Salt is optimistic Brendon McCullum can get the best out of him when the England Test head coach also assumes control of the white-ball sides.

The parallels between them as ultra-aggressive opening batter-wicketkeepers were remarked upon during Welsh star Salt’s stint this year with Kolkata Knight Riders, the Indian Premier League franchise McCullum previously played for and coached.

Salt’s astronomical strike-rates in both ODIs and T20s are among the highest of all-time although consistency, especially in the 50-over format, has proved elusive.
But the Denbighshire-born Lancashire batsman believes his full potential could be unlocked when he gets to experience the Bazball approach, with McCullum set to take charge of all three England men’s teams from January.

“I really do hope so,” Salt said.

“I’ve heard so many good things about Baz from people in franchise cricket and the Test boys – they can’t speak highly enough of him.

“I’m really excited to work with him and see what he’s got for me. When I was at the IPL with KKR, everybody kept saying ‘McCullum this, McCullum that, you’re like this, he’s like that’.”

https://twitter.com/cricketontnt/status/1851169072366411841

Salt has already been in dialogue with McCullum, having been mentioned as a contender to take on wicketkeeper-batter duties at the start of the English summer, a position which went to Jamie Smith.

While Smith has excelled in the role, Salt is hopeful he has not missed the boat, even if being so in demand on the T20 franchise circuit leaves little room in the calendar to enhance his Test credentials.

“I had a chat with Baz and he said my time will come and it will be a lot of fun when it happens,” Salt, who averaged in excess of 40 in the 2022 and 2023 County Championship, said.

“Once you’ve had that conversation, your next thing to do is to show them something they’ve not seen and find a little block of red-ball to go bang out the volume of runs.

“The tricky thing for me is the schedule. But hopefully in the future that door is not shut. You want to play all the cricket you can in an England shirt.”

Salt could push his Test claims on the white-ball tour of the West Indies starting on Thursday with the first of three ODIs in Antigua, where he could open the batting alongside Michael Pepper in an ideal union for headline writers.

The 28-year-old is eager to draw a line under a 3-2 defeat by Australia last month after averaging 19.2, albeit on tricky end-of-summer pitches aiding all-time greats Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood.

“If it gets harder than that, I’d like to see it,” Salt said with a smile. “But I knew I could have done better.”

Salt had been on an exclusive diet of T20s this year up until those five ODIs and he accepted he may need to modify his approach in practice if he is to have success in both formats.

“It’s maybe something I need to look at a bit more, how to keep the tempo and structure of 50-over cricket in my game when personally my schedule is so T20-heavy,” he said.

“I’ve certainly had a refocus on that when I’ve been training; it’s going back to basics and what makes a successful 50-over batter. I’ve got a good opportunity to show that in the West Indies now.”

If his position in the ODI side could do with being solidified ahead of next year’s Champions Trophy, there are no doubts about Salt’s place in England’s T20 line-up, having captained them in a 1-1 draw against Australia in the absence of Jos Buttler.

With Buttler’s nagging calf injury ruling him out of the ODIs in the Caribbean and leaving him doubtful for the five-match T20 series which follows, Salt may have to deputise once again.

“I really enjoyed my first go at it,” Salt added. “I think about the game a lot, sometimes maybe too much. Captaincy made me drag it right back to the basics of what the team needed in that moment.”

:: Phil Salt was speaking at the launch of cinch’s new store in Manchester. For more information about cinch, visit https://www.cinch.co.uk/used-cars

Welsh Fire Finals Hope Snuffed Out By Master Blaster Tymal Mills