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. Their highest T20 total was turbocharged by a brilliant opening stand of 126 between Phil Salt and Jos Buttler and by their highest individual score, Salt knocking himself off the top of that chart with an unbeaten 141. Within a week and against the same opponents they have set new national records for winning margins in both one-day internationals and now T20s, the final difference here an almost comic 146 runs.
Salt described his evening as “really good fun” but the experience for Shukri Conrad, South Africa’s head coach, was anything but. He described a bowling performance that – having invited England to bat first – “was way off, bereft of ideas” as England were allowed to plunder 30 fours and 18 sixes en route to a score of 304 for two, with nearly twice as many boundaries (48) across the innings as there were dot balls (25).
“When there’s an onslaught we need to find different plans,” Conrad said. “I don’t think we bowled enough yorkers, didn’t use the short ball enough. We became one-dimensional. An abject performance, really not good enough. At the end of the day players have got to take a long look at themselves. What’s the saying? When all around you are losing their heads you’ve got to make sure you keep yours – and we weren’t able to do that tonight.”
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 for the visitors to chase.
South Africa 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 earlier. But if at that stage they were freewheeling, those wheels immediately came off.
Ryan Rickelton pulled the very next delivery to Liam Dawson at midwicket and before that over had finished Lhuan-dre Pretorius had top-edged to Luke Wood at short third. Dewald Brevis followed in the next over, 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 just 15 deliveries later they were 36 behind and three wickets down, and the rest was a formality. They were eventually dismissed for 158, one ball into the 17th over.
With the ascent of Jamie Smith, rested for this series along with Ben Duckett, Salt has become less central to this white-ball side, but at his best he is unrivalled in this format. No other Englishman has scored more than a single T20 century and the 29-year-old now has four, with his 119 in Trinidad at the end of 2023, previously the nation’s all-time best, 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.
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Salt admits that he learned much from Buttler at the start of his career. “I couldn’t turn into Jos Buttler overnight, I was aware of that,” he said. “But while I can’t turn into Jos Buttler I’ve certainly tried to take the best bits.” Here 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 Kagiso Rabada. It was Lizaad Williams who received the harshest punishment, however, with his first two balls pinged into the crowd off the middle of Buttler’s bat and his night going downhill from there.
With the series now level South Africa head to Trent Bridge for Sunday’s decider knowing they can only improve, while England ponder whether such a thing for them is even possible. On that front Harry Brook, who himself scored a frenetic, 21-ball 41, was typically optimistic. “With the batting lineup we’ve got,” he said, “there aren’t many heights we can’t reach.”
