Michael Pepper has heard all the jokes before about Salt being English cricket’s preferred condiment, but hopes to add piquancy of his own on the limited-overs tour of the Caribbean.
Pepper’s first international call-up has presented the possibility of him forming a dynamic batting partnership with Phil Salt at the top of England’s order.
The wicketkeeper-batters from Essex and Lancashire respectively have never played alongside each other before, but the possibility of the seasoned opponents being part of the same England team has been put on the table by captain Jos Buttler’s second set-back in recovery from a calf injury.
‘Yeah, I have been choked by the crowd about Salt being better than Pepper over the years and now there is all of this stuff of it being a Salt and Pepper opening partnership. It’s definitely done the rounds,’ he told Mail Sport.
‘It’s often been little kids – when you think they’re about to do something nice and ask for an autograph – that actually give you a little chirp. It’s quite funny then.’
Michael Pepper (pictured) has received a late call-up to England’s tour of West Indies
Pepper could now form a dynamic batting partnership with fellow wicketkeeper Phil Salt
At 26, Pepper is something of a late developer. At the start of the 2024 season, he had made just 15 first-class appearances across five years and it was not until June that he scored a first-team hundred for Essex, but once he got the taste, he could not stop, finishing with four. Two of those came in the Vitality Blast, a competition in which his tally of 32 sixes was seven better than the field.
Salt established himself as an England opener on last December’s white-ball series against West Indies and if Buttler cannot recover for the start of the five Twenty20 internationals starting in Barbados next week, one of the best named pairings in sport could come to fruition.
‘I guess we do similar things as top-order batsmen and keepers. We are quite aggressive white ball players and the bottom line of white-ball cricket, being at the top of the order, is to make use of the power play,’ Pepper says.
Before then, England change from Test to limited-overs tempo with three one-day internationals against the Windies starting on Thursday.
Pepper is ‘just planning to go out and have fun if I get the chance,’ having only received the news of his call-up when national selector Luke Wright interrupted a golfing holiday to Antalya, Turkey, last week.
‘I normally ignore calls from unknown numbers, but I saw I had missed one earlier on, so I was curious to know who was phoning. Then as soon as he said who it was, I was in shock,’ he reveals.
Contact came following a break-out nine months in which Pepper focused on expanding his power game, either side of a first Twenty20 franchise experience overseas – at the ILT20.
Pepper earned a Team of the Year medal at the PCA Awards earlier this month and is now set for international honours
Pepper has thrived for Essex in 2024, hitting four centuries across all formats
‘I was never really much of a six hitter, so I used to have to try use sweeps, ramps, all of that stuff to get boundaries and be running a lot,’ he explains.
‘So, it meant having to do a lot of premeditation whereas now I still have those options, but will also back myself to stand still and hit the ball for six from any position or any ball.
‘Possibly that came down to adding a little bit of strength, the fact I am a bit older and that I did quite a lot of work on it last winter, realizing that was where I could improve my game.’
Pepper spent 2023-24 as he had the previous six off-seasons, working with mentor Gary Kirsten – who stood down as Pakistan’s white-ball coach on Monday – in Cape Town.
The South African connection comes from his mother Marilse. Although Pepper was born and raised in Harlow, he sports an unmistakable twang due to his Afrikaans maternal heritage.
‘These days I play quite a few different shots, score in quite a few different areas and hopefully people will see that. I enjoy facing spin, and obviously, historically it normally does turn here. I would back myself quite highly against that. Otherwise, I’ve not really set out too many goals, as I’ve never really done that in the past,’ says Pepper, who also name-checks Essex batting coach Tom Huggins for developing the technical work he does in off-season with Kirsten.
As if to emphasise the point, he travelled with little knowledge of the roles that might await for him, other than making sure he packed his wicketkeeping gear in addition to his bats.
England have a number of prolific scoring wicketkeepers, including white-ball captain Jos Buttler
Pepper (left) is keen to take his chance and prove he belongs on the biggest stage
His selection adds to the growing number of prolific scoring glovemen England have produced in recent years. In addition to Salt and Buttler, Essex team-mate Jordan Cox is also on the tour while Jonny Bairstow, Sam Billings and Jamie Smith have all featured in white-ball internationals inside the past two years.
‘It used to be if you were a batsman, you would bowl part-time off spin to get into squads,’ he says. ‘Whereas now it’s almost changed to: can you keep on the side to add another string to your bow?’
Over the next three weeks, Pepper will be keen to offer an alternative flavour to that mix.
