'It's more of a future thing' - why Glenn Phillips bats left-handed sometimes

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Just as he forgets he is a man, and therefore can’t fly, it sometimes slips Glenn Phillips’ mind that he is right-handed to the extent that, two days before the New Year, at the Super Smash T20s, he took strike the wrong way around – and hit the ball for six over midwick– no, wait, it had become cover by then.

Phillips is known for being out of the box. At the 2022 T20 World Cup, he once went full sprinter-at-the-starting-line at the non-strikers’ end – knees bent, head down, one hand touching the turf – to get a head start without leaving himself vulnerable to a run-out backing up. His latest trick – he explained to NZC ahead of departing for the white-ball tour of India in January – was “a couple of years” in the making.

“I do enjoy my left-handed batting training,” Phillips said. “Obviously, I do it for multiple reasons. One, just to keep both hands and both sides of the brain working, but also just for the opportunity to, I guess, take down left-arm spin at some stage.”

The ball turning away from a batter is considered a favourable match-up in T20 cricket, which leads teams to prioritise a left-arm orthodox spinner given, at any level of cricket, a significant proportion of batters are right-handed. Phillips’ take down of Jayden Lennox last Tuesday though is unlikely to be the start of something… just yet.

“It’s more of a future thing,” he said, “But for the opportunity to come in a game where there’s going to be a lot of left-arm off-spin bowling, I guess it sort of made sense to give it a go and bring it back to the forefront of the training leading into that game. And the fact that the opportunity came during the game to use it was quite good.”

“I’ve always been able to bat left-handed. It’s something I’ve done since I was young. I was going to switch when I was about 10 years old and actually bat left-handed full-time, but I decided to stick with the right hand, as I was just a little bit too lazy to take it fully.

“And then probably around 20 years old, Super Smash-wise, I thought it was a great opportunity to be able to play left-arm spin bowling, considering every team has a left-arm orthodox. So I started working on [it] a bit more, facing pace bowlers in the nets, as well as the spinners, just to, I guess, really tune things in and work on it properly.

“And obviously it’s been a few years since it’s really had a chance to come out in the pipeline. But yeah, as I said, for it to actually pay off and for years of work to come out on the field was really quite cool.”

A few things need to come together for Phillips to unleash his inner left-hander.

“It’s just trusting the training and understanding that I’ve just got to watch the ball as much as possible and I guess know that I’ve done the work and I’ve done the preparation and so there’s no reason it shouldn’t work. But also, I guess, I generally have used it in the situation where there’s nothing left to lose. There’s a couple overs left and it’s now time for a bit of fun, I guess, really.”

Phillips was 83 not out in a domestic-level game where there were only two balls left in the innings, with his team, the Volts, well placed at 186 for 6, when he took guard as a left-hander. On the horizon though is a T20 World Cup in the subcontinent, with a sneak peek of the conditions just ahead of it, during a seven-match ODI and T20I series against India starting on January 11 (although none of the venues New Zealand will be visiting next week will be in use at the ICC event).

“The preparation is going to be perfect,” Phillips said. “Obviously, the conditions may be a little bit different to what we’ll actually get in the World Cup. You never quite know what sort of pitches that people will produce, especially if we’re playing subcontinent teams. They tend to try and produce something that’s a little bit more spin-friendly. But when we’re on this T20 and ODI tour, they tend to produce pitches that are really quite good.”

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