New Zealand all-rounder Glenn Phillips was not happy with a question about his side’s fielding in the first T20I against India in Christchurch, contesting exactly how many catches they dropped and what constitutes a ‘drop’ in the first place.
The question, seemingly from an Indian reporter, asked him about four dropped catches. Mitchell Santner failed to hold on to a difficult chance offered by Axar Patel at 12.5 overs, while Matt Henry could not complete a tough return catch off Axar in the 14th over. Finn Allen then dropped Shreyas Iyer at 14.6 overs, and Lockie Ferguson spilled a difficult outside edge from Naman Dhir at 17.6, conceding a boundary.
But Phillips said the Ferguson chance shouldn’t have counted as a ‘drop’ because the bowler hardly
got his hand to it.
“I mean, drop catches happen,” Phillips said initially at the question, before stopping midway and adding: “Four? Which ones? Lockie? You’re counting two that no one got their hands on? Oh, yeah, so you guys are counting those? One from Mitch and one from Finn, so not really the other two; you’ve got to get your hands on the ball to catch it.”
At 16.2 overs, Nathan Smith nearly took a sensational boundary-line catch off Dhir, but his momentum carried him and the ball over the rope.
“Nathan at the boundary line? One that went for six? Wow,” Phillips bit back when one tried to count that as a drop. “How many catches did you guys drop? Okay, so you guys want to start talking field, then you’ve got to count the proper catches. Catches happen, and dropped catches happen, but we need to be counting them properly, okay? You’ve got to get your hands on some of them.”
In either case, fielding played a huge role in New Zealand’s failure to defend 225.
