3 hours ago
1
England made history, and for the first time more than 300 runs, on an extraordinary night in Manchester as they buried South Africa under a mountain of runs and shredded statistics. The highest total in the team’s T20 history was turbocharged by a brilliant opening stand of 126 between Phil Salt and Jos Buttler and by the nation’s highest individual score, Salt knocking himself off the top of that chart with an unbeaten 141. So within a week and against the same opponents they have set national records for winning margins in both one-day internationals and now T20s, the difference here an almost comic 146 runs.
From the very start, with boundaries struck off each of the first three balls of the day, Salt tore into South Africa’s bowling much as he would in time tear up the record books. The result was the third highest team total in the history of international T20s, behind only Zimbabwe’s 344 against Gambia last year and Nepal’s 314 against Mongolia in 2023, and an implausible target of 305 for the visitors to chase.
The only possible encouragement for the tourists was the fact that the only time anything remotely similar has been achieved – the only time, in fact, that a total above 250 has been reined in – it was by this very team, by scoring 259 at home to West Indies in March 2023. But even that task was a doddle compared with this, which remained feasible only briefly.
They had no choice but to go hard from the start and for a while they managed to more or less keep pace with England, reaching 50 off the third ball of the fourth over, just one delivery later than their opponents had a little earlier. But if for a while they were freewheeling, it was at precisely that moment that the wheels came off.
Ryan Rickelton had started that over by driving Jofra Archer straight and low for four before lifting him twice over mid-on, to almost identical spots just beyond the boundary rope, for six. But with the score on precisely 50 he pulled the next delivery to Liam Dawson at midwicket and before that over had finished Lhuan-dre Pretorius had top‑edged his second legal ball to Luke Wood. Dewald Brevis went a few balls later, and with that what had appeared extraordinarily unlikely ticked gently into the realm of outright impossibility.
From more or less matching England after 21 balls, the point when they reached 50, by the end of the powerplay, 15 deliveries later, they were 36 behind and three wickets down, and the rest was a formality.
With the ascent of Jamie Smith, rested for this series along with Ben Duckett, Salt has become less central to this white-ball side, and he has not played a one-day international since England were thrashed by South Africa in the Champions Trophy on the first day of March. But in the shortest format his CV is exemplary: there have only been eight occasions when an English batter has hit a T20 century and Salt has now been responsible for four of them. His 119 at Tarouba at the end of 2023, previously the nation’s all-time best, was left looking almost as sorry and underpowered by the end of this evening as South Africa’s bowlers.
He took only 39 balls to reach triple figures, another national record, and scarcely slowed from there. It is a measure of how remarkable his innings was that it turned Buttler’s brilliant 30-ball 83 into a footnote.
Buttler beat Salt to his half-century, reaching that mark in the fifth over to Salt’s ninth, and from 18 balls to Salt’s 19. The pair of them drove each other on and the bowlers to distraction, evidenced by the string of no-balls conceded by their premier bowler, Kagiso Rabada.
after newsletter promotion
It was Lizaad Williams who received the harshest punishment, however, his first two balls pinged into the crowd off the middle of Buttler’s bat to set the tone and his three overs in the end featuring just two dot balls, and 11 boundaries.
The teams made just once change each, England bringing Archer in for Jamie Overton and South Africa plucking the spinner Bjorn Fortuin out of Hampshire’s squad for Saturday’s Vitality Blast Finals Day – he set off for Edgbaston at the end of this game – to replace the injured Keshav Maharaj.But from the moment the players emerged into the early evening Mancunian sunshine in every other respect this match was completely different to the wild, rainswept and hugely unsatisfactory shootout that opened the series in Cardiff.
Harry Brook called that night a “shambles” but if that was a night when nothing for his side went right, this was the exact opposite.
