Phil Salt is a meticulous planner. Before a game, he breaks down numbers, he studies pitch maps, and he arrives at the crease with his plans in place. On Sunday night against Mumbai Indians (MI), he would have had his plans, but wouldn’t have expected to face the bowlers he did during his 36-ball innings. His eyes would have lit up. Salt may not have had a great 2026, but he is one of the premier T20 openers and if the opposition gets a couple of steps wrong, he can cause serious damage.
Since the start of IPL 2024, there was hardly any difference in Salt’s strike rate against spin (179.09) and pace (175.50). But you narrow it down to the powerplay, he had been going after spin at nearly 259 before Sunday’s game, as opposed to 169 against pace. He wouldn’t have expected spin early on.
After Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) had been put in to bat, Salt had been dispatching anything even marginally short from the fast bowlers to race to 22 off 13 before MI introduced spin, in the form of Mitchell Santner, for the fifth over. With RCB racing away to 41 for 0 and two right-hand batters at the crease, bringing on a left-arm spinner, a top-quality one at that, was in many ways expected.
The short first delivery from Santner was like a gift as it came with pace, and Salt pulled it away for six with his quick arms. Virat Kohli was so impressed that he applauded tapping his hand on the bat.
Next ball, Santner overcompensated and went on the fuller side and Salt pounced on it with such ferocity that the ball sailed over the long-on boundary and into the second tier. This time, Kohli went across and punched Salt’s glove in celebration.
The third one, again short, was sent the ball sailing into the stands courtesy Salt’s brute power. Three sixes in a row.
The MI fielders’ shoulders had started to drop and the raised eyebrows of captain Hardik Pandya were visible from a distance. But Salt was not done. The fourth was given air, and was pitched outside off, and Salt mowed it down with a slog sweep for four. Nothing came off the last two, but Salt had made it a 22-run over.
The real impact of that assault was that Jasprit Bumrah, who had bowled the third over for just ten runs, had to bowl the sixth too.
Even though Salt was carrying the RCB innings almost on his own, the Wankhede crowd belted out chants of “Aarceebee, Aarceebee” and “Koh-lee, Koh-lee” even though the star batter looked far from his best. But that was hardly going to affect Salt.
RCB were 65 for 0 with one powerplay over to go, and MI were so desperate that Hardik gave a second over to Bumrah in the powerplay. Bumrah conceded just six, and Santner pulled things back with four runs in the seventh, but Hardik then turned to legspinner Mayank Markande, ahead of Shardul Thakur.
By now, Salt had faced 24 balls and had his eye in firmly, ominously for MI. If it was all muscle and flashy batswing in Santner’s first over, it was timing and the ability to find gaps against Markande in his first over. The hot streak of 4, 4, 4 was completed with a disdainful six to the leg side off another short delivery.
Kohli was scratchy, going at just over 130 at the other end, so Salt’s knock was all the more crucial on a flat pitch where runs were going to flow in the chase too, especially with dew expected when RCB were going to bowl. It was the Wankhede anyway.
“Some of these grounds aren’t the most bowler-friendly, so you have to keep the mentality that you will keep going at the opposition,” Salt said on the broadcast after being named the Player of the Match. “And not forget your assets as a player, it’s about being a match-winner, isn’t it? I know I can’t get runs every game, nobody can.”
It was Devdutt Padikkal and Rajat Patidar who had led RCB’s chase of Sunrisers Hyderabad’s 201 in their first game. Tim David had powered them to a mammoth 250 in the second against Chennai Super Kings. And after a blip in Guwahati – though 201 was not a batting failure even though they lost comfortably – Salt’s form in Mumbai, to go with Kohli and Patidar’s consistent run-scoring, completes the batting side of things for RCB at IPL 2026 before they head to Bengaluru for a stretch of three home games.
