Phil Salt is expected to be given the opportunity to audition for a long-term place in England’s batting order when the team play their first fixture after Ben Stokes’s retirement from one-day international cricket against South Africa at Old Trafford on Friday.
The Lancashire batter’s six previous 50-over games for England, against Pakistan at home last summer and in the Netherlands last month, have come in series when for various reasons an understrength side was selected, so being picked on his home ground would represent something of a breakthrough.
“It’s my first time being in around it with the full-strength squad, being in the conversation for a place in the XI,” he said. “This is an opportunity for people such as myself, the lads who have been around it and played bits and pieces but not had a solid run as yet, and you’ve got to take it with both hands. I’ve been on the fringes for a while, and I want to get in there and show people what I can do.”
Across his career Salt averages 40.28 in 50-over cricket, but so far for England his average is 58.66 with a strike rate of 132.33. The sample size is small, but of those who have played at least six times for England he has by some margin the highest average and the best strike rate. However, while in each of those games he played in his favoured position as opener – it is five years since he batted anywhere else in this format – with Jason Roy and Jonny Bairstow ensconced at the top of the order his chance is likely to come a little later.
England: Roy, Bairstow, Root, Salt, Buttler (c, wk), Livingstone, Moeen, Willey, C Overton, Rashid, Topley.
South Africa: De Kock (wk), Malan, Van der Dussen, Markram, Klaasen, Miller, Pretorius, Maharaj (c), Nortje, Ngidi, Shamsi.
Umpires: David Millns, Richard Illingworth
Third Umpire: Richard Kettleborough
Fourth Umpire: Mike Burns
“I think I’m slotting in wherever the opportunity comes,” the 25-year-old said. “They’re the best opening partnership in 50-over cricket, there’s no doubt about that. Look at the numbers, and the way they’ve changed how the game is played. Wherever my opportunity comes, that’s where it comes.”
Having already lost the first of three games against the South Africans another failure on Friday would condemn England to a third successive white-ball series defeat, but Salt insists the situation is not affecting the squad. “I don’t think there’s any sort of turned-up pressure in the dressing room at all,” he said. “We know what we need to do and we know how good we are. It’s a case of getting your chest out, crossing the line and proving it again and again. That’s what made this squad world champions.”
South Africa will be without Andile Phehlukwayo, who has been ruled out of the rest of the series with concussion after colliding with Keshav Maharaj in Tuesday’s first game.
