Why Glenn Phillips doesn’t have an IPL contract yet?
Born in the Eastern Cape, Glenn Phillips, is one of many cricketing talents that South Africa have quite generously lost to the rest of the world. The New Zealand and Auckland wicketkeeper-batsman has now played one Test and 25 T20Is for his adopted country.
The 24-year-old Phillips has been around the Kiwi circuit for a while, but it is in the last summer of cricket that he really got into his own as a T20 batsman.
Entrusted to be one of only three New Zealand batsmen – alongside Martin Guptill and Devon Conway – who played all 14 of their T20Is in the 2020-21 home season against West Indies, Pakistan, Australia, and Bangladesh, Glenn Phillips proved to be his team’s stand-out performer.
Phillips made 366 runs at a whopping strike-rate of 184.84, while maintaining a respectable average of 40.66. And though Guptill (403) and Conway (473) made more runs than him, they had a significantly lesser strike-rate – 152.65 and 151.11, respectively, albeit playing different roles.
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Glenn Phillips made two scores of 50 or above in the season, the best of which was, of course, his scintillating hundred against the West Indies. Walking in at No.4 in the second T20I in Mount Maunganui, Phillips blasted the helpless visiting attack to all parts at Bay Oval and became New Zealand’s fastest men’s centurion in T20I cricket. The explosive right-hand batsman reached the milestone in just 46 balls and ended up scoring 108 off 51 deliveries.
Despite his breakthrough season, however, Glenn Phillips’ dream to earn his maiden Indian Premier League (IPL) contract remained unfulfilled as none of the eight franchises offered him a bid for the 2021 season. That, despite him keeping his base prize to an underwhelming INR 50 Lakh in the hope to get a chance to play the world’s biggest T20 league.
Glenn Phillips (pic courtesy: Twitter/ICC)
Why Glenn Phillips doesn’t have an IPL contract yet?
With IPL no longer in its infancy, teams are smarter than ever regarding their picks and slightly wary as well, especially for those coming in to play from abroad. Whenever an overseas player arrives and is touted by people outside for an IPL contract, the ability to counter the Indian conditions, particularly batting against spin, becomes the main focal point for the franchises.
The ability to adjust to the Indian conditions is what has separated those who have succeeded from those who have fallen by the wayside in the IPL. It’s a hard league for foreign cricketers: playing 14 T20 matches away from home against the world’s players, backed by the world’s best coaches, scouts and analysts, pose an ultimate test of your resolve and range.
It’s here, though, that many feel Glenn Phillips is more of a ‘have’ than ‘have not’. Phillips has shown through his journey so far that he relishes all kinds of bowling and his success isn’t limited to conditions where the ball flies onto the bat.
In the last year’s Caribbean Premier League (CPL), playing for Jamaica Tallawahs in conditions that spinners really enjoyed, Phillips ended as the second-highest run-maker (316 runs). His average to strike-rate ratio was perhaps the best among all batsmen in the league. He went at 127.42 runs per 100 balls, while averaging 35.11 – in context of the surfaces used for CPL 2020, this was exceptional.
In the ongoing T20 Blast, Phillips has already played a few stand-out knocks for Gloucestershire – again, conditions in complete contrast to the ones he tackled in the Caribbean last year – while retaining his innate six-hitting abilities.
In the pink of health with his game, Glenn Phillips is an efficient and flexible T20 batsman, who can play a variety of roles depending on his team’s needs and do so, while also contributing as a gloveman. It’s a combination that should entice franchises and open doors for Phillips’ IPL entry sooner rather than later.