Ireland v England: second men’s T20 cricket international delayed by rain – live

Updates from the second match of the series in Malahide
Taha Hashim on Phil Salt | Sign up for The Spin | Mail Jim

My friend/comrade/mentor/squeeze Jon Hotten has also dipped his quill about all things Phil Salt, you’ll have a squizz if you know what’s good for ya:

But numbers are just one way of expressing what Phil Salt does, what he is part of. They’re like the score to a great symphony, understandable as the method of conveyance, but hardly like hearing the music. Indeed, you don’t need to be able to read the music to listen, in the same way that you can watch without the slightest interest in interpreting the statistics.

So what is it like to watch Phil Salt? What language do we need for that? Because he is not one for the aesthetes or the classicists, is he? His conventional shots are not quite beautiful, they don’t have the zing or the dazzle of a Lara or a Sharma or a Gill. Abhishek, as a left-hander, has all of that mirrored grace absent from old Salty. No-one is hanging a Salt on their wall.