How Black Cap Glenn Phillips defied the doubters to become a genuine test bowler

Tuesday, 5 March 2024

Something important changed for Black Caps all-rounder Glenn Phillips in the first test defeat against Australia last week.

After seven years of trying to prove himself as a red-ball off-spinner, and trying to shake off the stigma that comes with being pegged as a wicketkeeper as a youngster, he became the first New Zealand spinner to take a five-wicket bag in a home test since 2008.

But more importantly, in his sixth test, he felt like he belonged at the bowling crease for the first time.

“I still get caught sometimes in a prove-it mindset, coming from a wicketkeeping background, where you’re always having to prove that stigma is wrong.

“It’s the first game where personally, from a mental perspective, I let myself feel that I was there to do a job, rather than to prove I could do the job.

“I think that mindset change really helped, especially against a side like Australia.”

Phillips began the match at the Basin Reserve in Wellington by contributing with the bat – his primary skill – by scoring 71 off 70 balls to lift the Black Caps from 29-5 to 179 all out in their first innings, in reply to Australia’s 383.

His five wickets – all of them members of the visitors’ regular top seven – then helped the Black Caps dismiss Australia for 164 the second time around, leaving them with a chase of 369.

New Zealand might ultimately have capitulated to be all out for 196 before lunch on Sunday, with Phillips being trapped LBW by fellow off-spinner Nathan Lyon for one, but the 27-year-old’s performances were among the few positives on offer as attention turns to the second test at Hagley Oval in Christchurch, starting Friday.

Phillips was a wicketkeeper in his first serious stint in the Black Caps, as part of the Twenty20 setup in late 2017 and early 2018, and that led to him being tagged as one in most people’s eyes, even though he had been a bowler for Auckland in first-class cricket from the get-go.

His passion for bowling only became widely-known in early 2021, when he told Stuff: “Literally my only problem is the fact that there are spinners picked in a team to be spinners, therefore I don't get a bowl.

“I feel like if I got a genuine run as a batsman and as a No 2 spinner, or even as a No 1 spinner, I could probably do it just as good as anybody else.”

Within weeks of making that statement, he was tossed the ball for the first time in international cricket, in a T20 win over Australia. Since his one-day international debut in mid-2022, he has been a regular presence at the bowling crease, with his best showing so far coming against Australia at last year’s World Cup, when he took 3-37. Then came the test tour of Bangladesh last November, where he bowled for the first time in tests, taking 4-53 in his first crack.

Now he’s one of three players to have scored a century, taken a five-wicket bag, snaffled catches both in the field and behind the wicket and completed a stumping in any of the three forms of international cricket, following West Indian Jimmy Adams and another New Zealander, JR Reid.

To manifest his destiny, Phillips moved from Auckland to Otago last summer in search of more bowling opportunities. He said getting to where he was last Saturday – the star of the show at New Zealand’s most storied cricket ground, against its fiercest rival – had been “a hugely long journey”.

“There's definitely been parts of it where I've wondered whether it was worthwhile, or whether I did have it in me.

“I moved all the way down to Otago and uprooted everything in Auckland; my wife came down – everything she's known is also in Auckland.

“For her to show that faith in me and then to also know that from that, I needed to have the same faith in myself – to take the opportunities that were given at a domestic level first, and then to know that when the opportunity came at international level, I'd done the work.”

By taking a five-wicket bag against Australia and becoming the first Black Caps spinner to take one at home since Jeetan Patel against the West Indies in Napier 16 years ago, Phillips has hopefully settled the question of whether he’s a part-timer or a genuine bowler once and for all.

His profile on go-to cricket website Cricinfo says as much these days. For a long time it had his “playing role” as “wicketkeeper batter,” but after a bit of nudging, it now simply says “all-rounder”.

Phillips has never lacked confidence in himself, but going forward he should encounter less external doubt – a sentiment that can sometimes be unsettling.

“I've definitely been caught in moments where I'm not taken seriously and then you have to get into that prove-it mindset again, which is sometimes hard to take.

“There’s a difference in mindset, understanding that I am a genuine option, not just someone for a ‘oh, here we go, we'll see how it goes, part-time scenario’.

“It's been about moving into that all-rounder mindset. I'm a batting all-rounder, first and foremost. That's where the opportunity lies.

“Eventually that stigma is going to die out, but keeping is one of those things that people don't like to let go of and no-one really takes you seriously for an incredibly long time.

“Which is why it's been such a hard road to be able to get to this point, where people accept that you can actually do bowling, batting and keeping all at the same time – even though I don’t want to keep at all.”

That prompts the question – when did Phillips actually last pull on a pair of gloves?

“I did it for the IPL last year – it was my biggest regret.”