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There was a fairly ordinary Tuesday crowd at Chepauk, hot, restless, yet Glenn Phillips still found room for a party piece. In the 13th over of New Zealand’s pursuit of 174 against Canada he flipped, mid-run-up, from right-handed to left-handed and slog-swept Saad Bin Zafar into the shorter leg-side boundary. Job done. The Black Caps eased home soon after.
“Yeah, it [the switch-hit] is different. It’s very much a specific place and time shot,” Phillips told us later, cricket bag at his feet, sweat still dripping. “Obviously short side, the leg side, and the reason for switching rather than staying left-handed to start was to hopefully keep that gap out cow corner free.”
Key facts first
• New Zealand beat Canada in Chennai, confirming a Super Eight berth.
• Phillips finished with 46 from 27 balls, strike-rate touching 170.
• The switch-hit arrived on a red-soil pitch with asymmetric square boundaries – 64 m one side, 72 m the other.
• All three of New Zealand’s Super Eight fixtures are in Colombo, starting next week.
So, why risk it in a World Cup fixture? Phillips shrugged: “So, obviously the opportunity came to use it today and sometimes you’ve actually still got to bring it out and have the courage to bring it out in a game, which can be sometimes hard. But I guess if you’ve practised it you’ve got to pull it out.”
Analysis, minus the jargon
The switch-hit is more than a YouTube clip. Bowlers tend to aim at the hip or wide outside off once a batter shows his hand; by swapping sides Phillips changes every angle in an instant. Fielders shuffle, captains rethink, confusion creeps in. That extra half-second can be worth a boundary. On a slowish Chepauk track, with the square on-side rope only ten paces behind mid-wicket, the risk felt manageable.
Phillips sees it as part of a broader scoring map. “For me, it’s not supposed to be a one-trick pony option,” he said. “The idea is that if the bowler bowls a good ball or he slows it up or bowls it wide or wherever he decides to put it, there’s a bail-out option – whether that’s hitting it through the leg side for one, or whether he puts it in the slot and I send it out of the ground.”
In other words, he wants two shots for every line. Limited-overs batting is increasingly about that kind of geometric insurance; the best players refuse to let a bowler shut them down on a length.
Form and future
This World Cup has treated Phillips kindly: scores of 43, 12 and now 46, all brisk, all under pressure. The Black Caps’ middle order, light on experience since Kane Williamson’s retirement, has leaned on him. New Zealand travel to Sri Lanka tomorrow; training is pencilled in for Khettarama once the rain eases.
Conditions there won’t mimic the Lanka Premier League, Phillips reckons. “The Lanka League was fast, bouncy, quick and 200 played 200 pretty much every game,” he said. “So I think actually the international stuff that we played where we played on trickier wickets was probably a little bit more valuable, but understanding that the outfields are incredibly fast. Sometimes it’s pretty tough to catch in the lights out there as well, so to be able to hopefully get a couple of trainings under lights would be fantastic.”
Spin is likely to dominate in Colombo; Khettarama’s surface has tired after a long domestic season. Expect Mitchell Santner and Ish Sodhi to shoulder more of the bowling. The batters, Phillips included, are drilling sweep, reverse-sweep, dab – any method to find twos and threes when the rope feels distant.
Perspective, briefly
New Zealand haven’t missed a T20 World Cup semi-final since 2014, yet they’ve still no trophy in the cabinet. The margins, as Phillips knows, get thinner every year. “But I guess it’s understanding that gaps and hitting the gaps hard, especially with how fast the outfields are over there, with how rock hard the outfield is, that definitely comes into play,” he noted, almost absent-mindedly rubbing the bat handle. “And the boys have had a few opportunities over the…” He tailed off, phone buzzing, team bus about to leave.
A half-finished sentence, a half-packed kit bag, and a switch-hit that turned a middling chase into a comfortable stroll – sometimes that’s all the insight you need.
