The incredible bulk: Phil Salt's added weight driving career-best form
Seventy-two hours: that was all the time Phil Salt needed to go from having never made a century in professional Twenty20 cricket to being the first ever Englishman to hit two T20 international hundreds. From buccaneering aggressor against the new ball, Salt is now shaping innings for altogether longer.
The first difference in Salt this tour was detectable well before his centuries in Grenada and Trinidad. At the end of the home summer in September, he consulted Lancashire about how he could bulk up and develop more power from his 5ft 10in frame.
“I wanted to make myself stronger, quicker and bigger,” he explains. Alongside a more vigorous gym programme, he embraced a new - and much more expensive - diet.
“I’ve been eating a lot of calories. To get through 3,500 calories a day has been a bit of a job.”
He jokes that Abi, his fiancee, “has been raging because the shopping bill has gone through the roof.”
Salt has only gained three kilos from his new regime. But he feels better-equipped to hit sixes over the off side as well as his favoured on side, and more able to match Andre Russell’s towering blows for West Indies.
“You watch someone like Dre Russ, see the specimen that he is,” he said. “And while I am never going to look like him, I can definitely make an improvement in that area. It’s all about marginal gains.”
Twenty-one sixes for Salt so far this series - one every 7.5 balls - attest to the results. He has hit two more sixes than fours, batting ideally tailored to T20 in the Caribbean. As West Indies’ players have long learned, a combination of the small outfields and some uneven bounce often renders aiming to clear the ropes preferable to trying to hit fours.
Salt’s second shift has been more subtle: one of brains rather than bulk. Without diluting his instincts, greater thought has helped him navigate the period towards the end of the Powerplay and after the fielding restrictions end.
Opening with Jos Buttler, for Lancashire, Manchester Originals and England too, is teaching Salt the value of selectivity. Such conversations are not inhibiting him - but about ensuring his audacity is aimed towards where it can be most effective. Against West Indies, this has sometimes meant being less aggressive against spin, or targeting shorter boundaries.
“When we are in the middle, it’s more ‘get me back in my box’,” Salt explains. “It’s pretty basic. It’s either ‘you’re doing really well,’ or ‘drop it down a gear’.”
Head coach Matthew Mott has observed his growing range too. Salt is becoming increasingly adept in how he continues his innings after the Powerplay. Consecutive fours in the eighth over at the Brian Lara Cricket Academy - first hitting over the covers and then, after a fielder moved to protect this area, past short third man, who was brought into the circle instead - indicated Salt’s adroit mind.
“One of the things I would say in the past about Salty, it was hard or harder,” Mott explains. “We’ve talked a lot about the gears and going through the gears.
“The best players in the world recognise moments where they might just drop down a gear. If a matchup’s not quite right for them, they just take their medicine for a few balls and get up the other end and then go harder at the better matchup.
“That’s been evident in the way he’s played in the last couple of games. He’s targeted certain bowlers and where he’s not as strong he’s he’s been able to get off strike and take pressure off himself.”
‘He’s become smarter... picking his balls to score off’
Gus Atkinson, an opponent of Salt in the English domestic game, makes a similar observation. “It just feels like he’s sort of become a bit smarter,” Atkinson says. “You always felt like you could get him out caught long on or whatever. But it just feels like he’s picking his balls to score off and rotating the strike a bit better.”
These twin centuries have been the culmination of a circuitous route for Salt. Born in Wales, he spent six years in Barbados as a child; his father is a property developer. Returning to Britain, Salt earned a sports scholarship at Reed’s in Surrey. Keith Medlycott, the former Surrey head coach who was coaching at the school, was convinced of Salt’s capabilities.
Surrey age group coaches were less sure; Salt had to go to Sussex to win his breakthrough into the professional game. His dynamism as an opener earned him his domestic one-day debut shortly before turning 19. In 2018, the summer that he turned 22, Salt thrived in the T20 Blast; he was then signed for the Pakistan Super League.
Two years ago, a Covid-19 outbreak led to Salt making his international debut. His evisceration of Shaheen Shah Afridi indicated a batsman with the chutzpah to attack the world’s best new ball bowlers. What was less clear was how England could accommodate him in their first-choice XI. After Dawid Malan’s injury, Salt made ten in the T20 World Cup final last year, but was not picked for the ODI World Cup.
Aged 27, Salt is finally sure of his place in England’s white-ball sides. While remaining true to the gallivanting style, there is a sense that he now doesn’t just expect to set-up games for England, but to finish the job himself.
“He’s spent a lot of time in and out of the team,” Mott reflects. “After he got the first hundred I said, ‘It’s a habit now’.
“You could see a different look in his eyes - like, not only do I belong, but I’ve got this’.”
During Salt’s 119 in Trinidad, Jason Holder attempted a wide slower ball to quell the scoring. Given his leg side preference, the delivery has sometimes been effective against Salt. No longer. After Salt thrashed another six over the off side, Buttler told him: “Teams can’t bowl to you.”
