Does Glenn Phillips bat right-handed or left-handed?

Cricket followers could be left perplexed with his exhibition in New Zealand’s Super Smash T20 competition for Otago against Central Districts last Tuesday, when he chose to bat left-handed in an effort to counter left-arm spin.

Batting left-handed enabled Phillips to dismantle left-arm spinner Jayden Lennox as he smashed 90 off 48 balls in a knock that included seven boundaries and four sixes.

Phillips thinks his increasingly refined left-handed batting offers a glimpse into the future.

“I do enjoy my left-handed batting training,” Phillips was quoted as saying. “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.”

Explaining his innovation to New Zealand Cricket, Phillips said it has been “a couple of years” in the making.

“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,” 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 up 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.”

Phillips admitted that several factors need to align before he fully unleashes his inner left-hander in competitive cricket.

“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 preparation, so there’s no reason it shouldn’t work,” he said.

“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.”

New Zealand’s white-ball tour of India begins with an ODI in Vadodara on Sunday. The three-match ODI series will be followed by five T20Is before the T20 World Cup next month.

“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,” he said.