Glenn Phillips spent a quiet moment looking up at a grey London sky, bat raised, after easing Jofra Archer through the off side for the single that carried him to three figures. The Oval crowd applauded; the New Zealander’s thoughts were elsewhere.
“It’s the anniversary of my dad’s passing tomorrow,” Phillips said. “Hopefully, with our boys doing their thing, maybe I’m not going to be needed tomorrow. But today is close enough for the moment to matter, and he’s been a big role in my life. I know he would have loved to be here to see that, and Test cricket was his favourite format… I know he’s watching in some stage.”
The hundred ‒ his first in Test cricket ‒ arrives almost six years after a late call-up debut in Sydney and makes him only the third New Zealand batter, after Brendon McCullum and Martin Guptill, to register international centuries in all three formats. It has been a slightly meandering path to this landmark, yet those who have tracked his progress always sensed the milestone would land sooner or later.
Phillips’ knock unfolded in three neat chapters. Night-watching spectators on Wednesday saw the sprinting start: 33 from 23 balls, almost all cut or driven square off Sonny Baker and Josh Tongue. The tempo then dropped: 16 from the next 51 deliveries as Archer banged the ball in short, repeatedly forcing Phillips to sway underneath or topple backward. Once he resumed on Thursday, the gears shifted again; 51 from 61 balls followed, ending on exactly 100.
That mid-innings duel with Archer felt both personal and engrossing. “We’ve actually had one of those duels before, six or seven years back in New Zealand, and he pretty much hit me in the exact same spots all over,” Phillips said. “He bowls with great heat, great accuracy, and he just kept coming back… Obviously, it was a thrilling contest for the crowd to see as well, and sometimes you’ve just got to enjoy it, laugh, and hope for the best.”
The numbers underline the narrative. Archer conceded only 13 runs from 44 balls to Phillips, three of them on Thursday morning as acting skipper Joe Root kept an eye on his spearhead’s workload after an eight-over burst the previous night. Against everyone else, Phillips motored: 87 from 91, visibly targetting Baker whenever England’s debutant missed his length.
That Phillips delivered this innings from No. 7 should not surprise seasoned observers of New Zealand’s flexible selection policy. Of his 19 Tests, he has batted in the top six only once, called up as an eleventh-hour replacement when Kane Williamson and Henry Nicholls fell ill on the 2020 Sydney tour. Yet the coaching staff continue to carve out roles for a cricketer who fields like a sprinter, bowls sturdy off-spin and, crucially, keeps improving.
Assistant coach Luke Ronchi, speaking before play, put the faith in simple terms: “Glenn turns up each day wanting to add something. That energy is hard to leave out.” The evidence seemed plain enough as Phillips shepherded the tail, added 61 with Kyle Jamieson and showed the calm usually associated with his more celebrated teammates.
Still, he downplayed the personal glory afterwards, channelling Williamson’s familiar mantra. “Kane obviously speaks about it quite a lot: we score our runs, but they’re never our runs,” Phillips said. “We’re just custodians of” — the sentence drifted, the thought clear enough.
New Zealand, 298 for 7 at lunch, will fancy posting something competitive on a pitch that seems to quicken in the afternoon sun. England, aware that chasing fourth-innings totals at The Oval can become awkward, already look to Archer for another burst of hostility. Root admitted as much in a brief TV chat: “We’ll need to be ruthless after the break; one partnership can swing this.”
A word, too, for Roland Phillips, absent yet present in every gesture from his son. In elite sport, milestones are often parsed in cold figures. This one came warmed by memory, delivered with a smile, and followed by a quiet nod to the sky.
