There are matches in cricket that you watch and think — that was special. And then there are matches that come along once in a generation and make you rethink what the format is capable of.
On a warm September evening at Old Trafford in Manchester, England did something that nobody in the history of international cricket had ever done before. They scored 304 runs in a T20 match against South Africa — the highest total ever posted by a full-member nation in the format. They hit 30 fours and 18 sixes. They scored 228 runs in boundaries alone. Three hundred and four runs in twenty overs. Fifteen runs per over. Every over. For twenty overs.
South Africa's bowlers — Kagiso Rabada, Marco Jansen, Nandre Burger, Tabraiz Shamsi, Bjorn Fortuin — are not bad cricketers. They are international players who bowl for their country. On that night at Old Trafford, they were made to look like they had never bowled in a T20 match before.
And at the centre of all of it was a man from Bowthorpe, Norwich who had already broken his own record for England's highest individual T20I score — and then broke it again on this very night.
Phil Salt. 141 not out. Off 60 balls.
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