Salt, the human Chernobyl
Moscow, 1972. An unlikely pair of doves, Presidents Nixon and Brezhnev, meet to sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks agreement, a ground-breaking deal curtailing the number of nuclear weapons held by the USA and Soviet Union. Fifty years on and the treaty has a cricketing namesake, but there is little limited or peaceful about him. Sorry, this awful start will be explained if not fully justified.
Phil Salt, England batsman, is obviously used to dealing with awful jokes about his name. In deference to his swashbuckling and explosive little stints in the middle, however, he deserves more than to merely be punned as a condiment. So tenuous Cold War mentions should actually be encouraged, to be honest, because Salt is effectively a one-man Chernobyl, combining incredible power with the sense that at any moment something could go terribly wrong. Even in this lukewarm post-T20 World Cup ODI series in Australia, the white ball belter is, albeit for admittedly very short periods, entertainingly red hot.
Salt is an appealing figure. A laddish twinkle and slightly posh curled lip that permanently appears on the verge of saying “Oi! Oi!” to his mates in an airport hall before they set off to Marbella. In the Second ODI against Australia in Sydney on Saturday, he played a brief innings of such magnificently fatalistic abandon it was like Jos Buttler, in a masterstroke of leadership, had told him Elon Musk had bought cricket and it might not last much longer.
A Welshman in the new land of his forefathers, the majority of his knock was with James Vince at the other end. Not many would take on the Hampshire skipper in an elaborate cover drive challenge, but Salt did so by charismatically trying to play one on the move while backing away to Starc. The ball dropped in flimsy embarrassment just in front of point. Yet before this Hazlewood had been taken for four via a swishy leg clip then, after that near miss, for six as Salt played a precise swivel-pull that was both balletic and robotic. A back foot spankcrunch through cover point off the same bowler was perfectly comparable to Vince’s similar shot soon after.
Salt then, with commendable bravado, tried a repeat of his earlier attempt to play a cover drive from short leg. As before, it didn’t come off but this time the bails did. Hazlewood, again the bowler and captain for the day, looked delighted but slightly nauseated. The Lancs Kalashnikov strolled off quite jauntily, seemingly well pleased with his 26 off 13 and rightly so. A century’s worth of entertainment in 29 minutes.
Salt’s tequila slammer approach has served him pretty well in his still fairly nascent international career. It is particularly welcome in this series, in which one side are playing despite being six days into a post-World Cup win bender. At one point the camera panned to the dugout to find Buttler, rested for today's encounter, taking the concept quite literally. But who doesn’t fancy a little snooze in the middle overs of an incredibly middling ODI series? What’s remarkable is that England’s on-field demeanour remains fairly energetic and upbeat, a testament maybe to this group’s pleasure at playing together. It’s hard to argue they are showing Kohli levels of intensity but, with the series outcome more predictable than whether Musk will allow Trump back on Twitter, they could so easily have appeared sullen and lethargic.
In fact, the sole purpose of the three matches seems to be to play Steve Smith back into form after his recent relative dip. Smith has stopped his famous shuffle across the stumps. It hasn’t, though, stopped him clipping off middle with a lateness that sees keepers’ hands flying up in futile appeal as the ball flies to the outfield. Having scored 80* in the First ODI and 94 in Sydney today, he claims this is the best he has felt for six years. As Wisden noted, this horrifically fallow period involved him notch 23 international tons. Smith is never one to stay still.
With Australia two up, the teams head to Melbourne for the Third ODI, which will be perhaps the deadest rubber of all time. Still, Salt should still shake things up. See, just tawdry stuff, isn’t it? Much better to say the man is cricketing napalm.