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Glenn Phillips walked out for Otago in the Super Smash two days before New Year, looked at the field, and quietly took guard left-handed. First ball went travelling over what was mid-wicket a moment earlier, now cover. A neat six, then back to business. Most people forgot it by the end of the over; Phillips hasn’t.
The New Zealander is, of course, a right-hand batter. Yet the idea of switching sides has been bubbling away for years. Speaking to NZC before departing for the January white-ball trip to India, he admitted the left-hand experiment was hardly spontaneous.
“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.”
Left-arm orthodox spin remains a staple in T20 cricket precisely because most batters are right-handed; the ball drifting away is a natural threat. Phillips, like any middle-order player, sees plenty of the angle. Jayden Lennox faced it last week and, in fairness, tried a sensible ploy: drag the ball towards the wide line outside off to kill the slog-sweep. It still disappeared. The shot was less a novelty than a planned response.
“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.”
Phillips’ willingness to push boundaries is not new. At the 2022 T20 World Cup he crouched like a 100-metre sprinter at the non-striker’s end, arm on the turf, searching for a fraction of advantage without wandering out of his ground. Switching hands is simply a more visible quirk.
“I’ve always been able to bat left-handed,” Phillips said. “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.”
Coaches around the domestic circuit have mixed views. One suggests it can upset rhythm in the nets; another points out the extra tactical flexibility. Former New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum once told a television panel that any edge, however small, was worth exploring, especially in 20-over cricket.
The next step is knowing when the risk outweighs the reward. Phillips is unlikely to flip his stance against high pace—35-yard boundaries are generous, 90-mph yorkers less so—but against tidy left-arm finger-spin on a big ground it makes sense.
“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,” he began, before trailing off in trademark fashion, half-smile, as though deciding to leave the thought for another day.
For now, opponents know the switch is coming at some point. Whether it happens in India, or remains tucked away until the next Super Smash, Phillips has made one thing clear: right-handed or left-handed, he’ll back the hours in the net.
