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.<\/p>\n
Salt described his evening as \u201creally good fun\u201d but the experience for Shukri Conrad, South Africa\u2019s head coach, was anything but. He described a bowling performance that \u2013 having invited England to bat first \u2013 \u201cwas way off, bereft of ideas\u201d 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).<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen there\u2019s an onslaught we need to find different plans,\u201d Conrad said. \u201cI don\u2019t think we bowled enough yorkers, didn\u2019t 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\u2019s the saying? When all around you are losing their heads you\u2019ve got to make sure you keep yours \u2013 and we weren\u2019t able to do that tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
From the very start, with boundaries struck off each of the first three balls of the day, Salt tore into South Africa\u2019s 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\u2019s 344 against Gambia last year and Nepal\u2019s 314 against Mongolia in 2023, and an implausible target for the visitors to chase.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Jos Buttler hits out on his way to a 30-ball 83. Photograph: George Franks\/ProSports\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s all-time best, left looking almost as sorry and \u00adunderpowered by the end of this evening as South Africa\u2019s 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\u2019s brilliant, 30-ball 83 into a footnote.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Subscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers’ thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week\u2019s action<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Salt admits that he learned much from Buttler at the start of his career. \u201cI couldn\u2019t turn into Jos Buttler overnight, I was aware of that,\u201d he said. \u201cBut while I can\u2019t turn into Jos Buttler I\u2019ve certainly tried to take the best bits.\u201d Here Buttler beat Salt to his half-century, reaching that mark in the fifth over to Salt\u2019s ninth, and from 18 balls to Salt\u2019s 19. The pair of them drove each other on and the \u00adbowlers 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\u2019s bat and his night going downhill from there.<\/p>\n With the series now level South Africa head to Trent Bridge for Sunday\u2019s 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. \u201cWith the batting lineup we\u2019ve got,\u201d he said, \u201cthere aren\u2019t many heights we can\u2019t reach.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England made history, and for the first time more than 300 runs, on an extraordinary night in Manchester…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-419765","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115194156993384572","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}