Phil Salt riding highs and lows in T20s as he aims to be ‘the best in the world’

Phil Salt is happy to take the rough with the smooth in T20s as he bids to be “the best in the world” after another star turn on a historic night for England.

Salt took South Africa’s bowlers to the cleaners at Emirates Old Trafford, amassing England’s fastest hundred in any format off just 39 balls while his unbeaten 141 was their highest individual T20 score.

Underpinning England’s best ever 304 for two to tee up a comprehensive 146-run series-levelling win was all the more remarkable after he was dismissed for a golden duck in Wednesday’s soggy opening match in Cardiff.

The wildly contrasting fortunes he has experienced are part and parcel for Salt, who celebrated his fourth hundred – no Englishman has more than one – and insisted he is still striving for improvement.

“T20 can be a little bit fickle, as we saw at Cardiff,” the opening batter said. “But it is about enjoying being there for as long as you can at the crease, especially for England.

“More than anything else, it’s just a will to impact the game. I want to take games as deep as possible while still batting at a high strike-rate.

“The two don’t often go hand-in-hand but that is the end goal. I’m someone who’s always looking at ways get better. The goal is to be right up there – I want to be the best in the world at this.”

Salt’s barnstorming 60-ball innings might go a long way to reenforcing his position at the top of the order with less than six months to go until England’s T20 World Cup campaign in India and Sri Lanka.

He opted out of the West Indies’ visit this year to take paternity leave and Jamie Smith, who replaced Salt in ODIs, stepped in to partner Ben Duckett as England sealed a 3-0 series clean sweep.

Asked if he received any promises from the England hierarchy his place was safe, Salt said: “That would probably be quite an arrogant thing in professional sport to ask for a guarantee on a spot on an international side.

“I don’t think it quite works like that. But England were very good to me at that point in time. My wife was giving up a lot in my career, made a lot of sacrifices, so for me to be there for those first two weeks when my son was born, it was a no brainer.”

With Smith and Duckett rested for this series, which concludes on Sunday at Trent Bridge, Salt reprised a successful opening partnership with Jos Buttler, who cracked 83 off 30 balls in Manchester.

The pair have four century partnerships in just 22 T20 international innings together, with Salt often tasked with getting England off to a flyer.

His first ball on Wednesday was caught on the boundary, but his methods have brought two Indian Premier League titles while a breathtaking strike-rate of 169.5 is bettered only by Abhishek Sharma among batters from Test playing nations – and India’s opener has played 18 T20s to Salt’s 45.

“In order to knock a man out of possession, you need to do something they can’t do,” Salt added. “From quite early in my career, I looked at that and if I can be the most dangerous in the first six, 10, 15 balls of the game, that’s quite a unique tool.

“Failures happen, that’s T20 cricket especially. But it’s just about something you can hold on to, run with and see where you can take it.”