Phil Salt powers England to emphatic victory and levels series with Pakistan

So this see-saw T20 series, the longest ever played between two international teams, has tipped again. England won the sixth match by eight wickets with 33 balls to spare. Which means everything is level at three-matches each. Sunday’s game will be decisive.

England’s top order finally clicked, in the same way the pill will eventually land on your lucky number if you keep spinning the roulette wheel. Phil Salt, who had made 71 runs in innings in his last eight T20 innings for England, splattered 87 runs across the Gaddafi Stadium, off just 41 balls. It was a brilliant innings, all vicious pulls and swingeing cuts and rocketing drives which skipped across the outfield so quickly that the chasing fielders seemed to move like molasses in January in comparison.

It felt like England had doubled down on the reckless approach that cost them in the previous match here when they lost the game chasing a smaller total than the 169 Pakistan made this time. Moeen Ali won the toss, again, and made the same decision to put Pakistan in. Moeen had been bitterly disappointed in the way his batsmen had played the last time he did that, but he was delighted with them on Friday night.

Salt could have been caught off the very first delivery, but the ball flew by just wide of point. He followed it up with four furious shots, three down the ground for four, the other flicked over fine leg for six. Alex Hales joined in with him, and belted Shanawaz Dahani down the ground for six, then hit three fours in a row off Mohammad Wasim. The two of them put on 50 runs together in just the first three overs of the innings before Hales was caught off the top-edge.

Salt’s response to the loss was to go harder. The fifth over went for 19, the seventh for 20,