By james art The parallels between them as ultra-aggressive opening wicket-keepers were noted during Salt’s stint this year with the Kolkata Knight Riders, the Indian Premier League franchise for which McCullum previously played and coached.
Salt’s astronomical strike-rates in both ODIs and T20s are among the highest of all time, although consistency, especially in the 50-over format, has proved elusive.
But he believes his full potential can be unlocked when he experiences Bazball’s approach, with McCullum set to take charge of all three England men’s teams from January.
“I really hope so,” Salt told the PA news agency. “I’ve heard so many good things about Baz from people in franchise cricket and the Test guys – they can’t speak highly enough of him.
“I’m really excited to work with him and see what he has in store for me. When I was in the IPL with KKR, everyone was saying ‘McCullum this, McCullum that, you’re like this, he’s like that’.
Salt was already in dialogue with McCullum, having been mentioned as a contender to take over the wicketkeeping duties at the start of the English summer, a position which went to Jamie Smith.
While Smith has excelled in his role, Salt hopes he hasn’t missed the boat, even if being so in-demand on the franchise T20 circuit leaves little room in the calendar for him to improve his Test credentials.
“I talked to Baz and he said my time will come and it’s going to be a lot of fun when it does,” said Salt, who averaged over 40 points in the 2022 and 2023 County Championships.
“Once you have that conversation, your next thing to do is show them something they haven’t seen and find a little block of red ball to go knock out the run volume.
“The difficult thing for me is the schedule. But we hope that in the future this door is not closed. You want to play as much cricket as you can in an England shirt.”
Salt can push his Test claims on the white-ball tour of the West Indies starting on Thursday with the first of three ODIs in Antigua, where he could open the batting alongside Michael Pepper in an ideal headline-making alliance.
The 28-year-old is eager to draw the line in last month’s 3-2 defeat by Australia after averaging 19.2, albeit on difficult pitches at the end of the summer, helping all-time greats Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood.
“If it gets any harder than that, I’d like to see it,” Salt said with a smile. “But I knew I could have done better.”
Salt has been on an exceptional diet from T20s this year to these five ODIs and he has accepted that he may need to change his approach in practice if he is to be successful in both formats.
“That’s maybe something I need to look at a bit more, how to keep the pace and structure of 50-over cricket in my game when personally my schedule is so T20 heavy,” he said.
“I’ve definitely refocused on that when I’ve been training; it’s back to basics and what makes a successful 50-over batsman. Now I have a good opportunity to show that in the West Indies.”
If his position in the ODI side could handle being cemented ahead of next year’s Champions Trophy, there is no doubt about Salt’s place in England’s T20 squad after captaining them to a 1-1 draw against Australia in Jos’s absence Butler.
With Buttler’s severe calf injury ruling him out of the ODIs in the Caribbean and leaving him in doubt for the five-match T20 series that follows, Salt may have to deputize for him again.
“I really enjoyed my first experience,” Salt added. “I think about the game a lot, sometimes maybe too much. The captaincy made me take it back to the basics of what the team needed at that moment.”
:: Phil Salt speaks at the opening of the new cinch store in Manchester. For more information about chinch, visit